A Callback

Flash fiction

Among willow trees, by a stream, there had been abuse in Ella's early life—because of which she had stayed with David far too long. Each the other's third partner. Met on the apps. Holidays to Barcelona, Paris, Dublin, Sicily. And settled in Cambridgeshire, for his work, something of an uprooting, for her, but now in a school where she felt fulfilled. As he softened and expanded, she refused herself food. He put down his guitar. She idled in the garden, playlist on. His hair absented itself. She cooked three thousand meals.

David said, “We don't need to get that,” which she didn't consider fair, because it was a sofa, and they were necessary, so shouldn't she be able to buy with her own money the one she thought nicest? And she said, “Well it's only fifty quid more and I'd rather have something that's gonna last and that I'd like to keep forever, than something I slowly resent for not being what I wanted?” David replied, “Buying a sofa shouldn't be as much of a fucking faff as this Ella.” She agreed of course, but couldn't say that. It should've been done and they should've moved on. A woman's role was to note, face, and internalise, but not resist, her partner's straining faults. Whenever Ella knew more, knowing more taught her to voice less. This was safer—and anyhow, some nights David could act romantic, with bouquets and massages and hotel bookings, with focus on her body in lieu of his, with oversentimental and ridiculous lexical pawings she nevertheless adored. She was puppy, honeybunch, pumpkin. Ella let David apply ylang-ylang and pretend with her that things were just fine, thanks. She'd learned early that submission was its own strength, in many ways braver.

When, at Easter, he got ill, naturally she became nurse. His bosses were very understanding. Take a month, take six if needed: we want you back, fighting fit. Ella supposed this to be to continue the incredible return-on-investment his employment represented, one percent more loyalty more than compensating them for the offer of six months' leave. Tulips were out at this time; they favoured frilly ones, in kitsch colours. Could, she asked, flowers be kitsch? Without human intention? David was too fatigued to care. She collected them in a vase for his sick-room, and he repaid her with complaints at the quality of the dinners.

“You're always trying to sponge my forehead,” he said.

“Yeah. Don't you like it?”

“No. It's not something people do. It's from films. I don't need a sponged forehead. I need to be out of fucking pain.”

“Sorry. I was only trying to help. I won't try.”

“Don't give me lip, fucksake. I'm dying here.”

“You're not dying. You're temporarily sick.”

“Feels like dying. Feels dreadful.”

“I can imagine.”

“You can't imagine. You're never ill.”

“Do you need anything else?”

“Less bland food. Otherwise no.”

Recovery came in autumn. He dealt with his indebtedness with willed amnesia, because she knew he couldn't bear owing anyone anything, even his wife. Wife—that was how she imagined herself. He had proposed but never agreed to anything more. For as long as they'd lived in the county they'd been engaged, but all talk of marriage was null now. He'd cooled on it, she suspected. She never asked him, to have him to confirm. Not knowing was a way of defending herself.

David may not have felt like he owed his firm any more of his time, but they extracted it from him anyway. He returned from the lab at nine p.m., on average, right through to Christmas. Ella therefore had to ready dinners at ten or even eleven, sometimes, and her own attempts at habit were crushed under his inattentiveness to her. Rising at six in the morning was an untried dream—she usually had a quarter of an hour to get to school when they woke up. David started later, of course. Engineers, tech people, scientists, all of them shuffled around in t-shirts for their first coffee at ten. Start late, finish late. As such, she only had him uninterrupted on the weekends. Saturday rarely, because he liked to game, undoing the week's trials by self-numbing, so she gave him Sundays, when she'd've rather've been gardening, but at least, sacrificing that, they could be together. Ella and David visited National Trust properties and went to the seaside in the rain and had a ritual takeaway, and then Monday came back into view.

His first affair was not an affair. She was the one to define it, and she wouldn't allow it to be termed an affair. A skimpy colleague, an all-staff retreat in Switzerland, indoor golf, peach schnapps. Ella was quite happy to assimilate this new woe into the more general woe of her life, being only a spike on a graph tending generally upwards. He'd tire, and it would not matter in a few months. And, when apologising, he did seem sincere. But the third woman she could not stand. Partly because they'd actually had her to a dinner party, and her husband was his friend. Partly because he'd apparently planned the deception so casually that he handed her his phone to book an Uber as notifications from the woman rolled in, pillowtalky, salacious, and nudes withal. Partly because if compromises are stoically borne it is easier to despise further affront.

David refused to end it with the third woman. Ella fought, but he fought her with a different, more difficult style. She had to soothe herself in her garden. Painstaking work in the intervals of his illness had meant that it now burst beautifully. Birds evidently concurred, always plentiful, always singing. Birds could row and tussle and be violent, and in thirty seconds be singing again. She liked their solace and example.

One day he said he would not break off what they had but would like to live with the third woman. He did not say that he would leave, or that she should leave. He meant that the woman would live with them, the three of them, the insult before Ella daily in physical form. So would she be expected to cook for the woman too?—and internally calculated the increase in cost of a third portion of every meal. Of course not, he said. Don't be stupid. Yet when she asked for concrete delineations of the new arrangement, he could not offer them. Ella took magnanimity as her weapon, intensifying how pathetically cruel he looked. She was accommodating to the utmost. Still he could give her nothing, because he used up the strategic part of his mind each day in the lab, and with her devolved to pure emotion. This time he brought her down to his level, and she felt an indifferent rage, and other moments of other things, such as weeping.

In the garden on an unconnected day weeks later Ella looped her playlist 'Ambient Peaceful'. She stayed, seated amidst the alliums. She then drove out for a walk with no one and passed by flats and spires and passed by fenland and into meadow. Not abuse—not giving in to that—being no echo nor mirror—just renouncing him, rather than renouncing herself. She had come to rid herself of the need to have David. She did not speak to him, leaving him asleep, awake early for once, but she did have her walk, in bright summer air, which was lesson enough. Dry plantlife seethed and crackled. Furs and pollens glid. Her hip hurt where there was a bruise.

Ella walked and walked, through a picture of total gentleness, where the meadowland was allowed to stretch and furl and grow lovely with the unimpeded growth of grasses and blooms. The sky took part, crimped and curved, with a goldilocks quantity of cloud. Rich washing impressionistic blue; endless botanic green. She walked and she saw that she was coming upon willow trees, riverside—only when she came closer they were not willows, were nothing like willows, but birches, birches, silver birches curling black and white, which had, between their leaves, sunlight.