Chapter 7

Chapter 7 - The brute

Angela was in the kitchen preparing their dinner. Bruno would be back soon she kept telling herself. The weight of their first born was heavy in her belly now. And she was only half way through her pregnancy. She felt tired. And her bones ached. She so wanted to lie down a little longer. But she had already slept too long that afternoon and so was now rushing the dinner. And she so wanted this to be a nice dinner. For Bruno needed cheering up. He had just had his first book published. It was about the history of the Grimaldi family and estate. It had bombed and the critics mocked him so. They could be incredibly cruel when they wanted to, she thought. And she had tried to warn him that it might not be ready to be published. She did try. That was when his behavior changed. That was when he became suddenly colder and more distant. And that was when he started drinking more.

It was a warm, mid-summer evening. She felt too hot in the kitchen. She loved her kitchen. Even though they had now been married for a few years, she still adored her kitchen as though it was brand new. It was state of the art when they built it. She ordered all the latest appliances and they contrasted fabulously with the stone walls and oak beams. The walk in freezer always made her feel like she ran a professional kitchen that could compete with any restaurant and to prove the point she bought restaurant quality pots and pans and utensils, her knife set alone cost a fortune and she took great care to have the cleaned and sharpened regularly.

The sauce had been bubbling away for half an hour and the hot water for the pasta was steaming. The oven was on, ready for the fish to go in and the kitchen felt like a sauna. It only had small windows to the outside. Angela felt a little faint. She stumbled through their elegant living room and onto their balcony sighing at the evening breeze. It freshened her just enough.

Then she saw her husband enter the piazza. He stumbled too, but his was from drink. She could tell he was drunk. She knew most of his movements by now. She had learnt to read them. She had had to - his temper was so quick and so unpredictable. He would be mad tonight she concluded. She felt her stomach rumbling. She thought of their unborn child. She ran inside.

The front door slammed. She could hear him panting as he carried his large frame up the steps. And she could have sworn she heard him drag his feet up the stairs, each pant accentuated by a shuffle. Pant, shuffle, pant, shuffle. It was as though they were counting down to something. She found it quite mesmerizing. The hot water boiled over. Sizzling white bubbles and steam poured out over her cooker. She snapped back and cleaned up burning her wrist. It hurt like mad and she squealed.

“How’s my dinner coming along.” Bruno growled.

He was in a foul temper and he was blind with drink. He hated the critics with all of his heart. He could not get their words out of his head. God, he hated them so.

“What’s going on in there? I’m hungry.”

He would not leave it alone. Bruno stormed into the kitchen.

Angela was by the sink, washing her burnt wrist under the tap. She looked over at Bruno. She was surprised to see him in the kitchen. He never entered her kitchen. He was sweating profusely. She thought about how his already over heated state would ensure he didn’t stay long in the kitchen. It was far too steamy.

“Where’s my wine?” He mumbled.

“In the dining room. I decanted it. It’s ready.”

Angela eagerly responded. Thank goodness she had remembered.

“Mmm…”

He rumbled, then he headed off to his wine. And as he turned around she noticed something red smeared across his neck.

“What have you done to your neck?”

“Oh, nothing,” he hurried as he tried to cover it up. Accidentally he revealed more of it to her in the split second before he covered it for good. It was red lipstick.

“That’s lipstick!”

“No it is not.” He shouted back as he shot out of the kitchen.

Angela followed Bruno. She followed him into the dining room. The dining room with blood red walls. This was the room she liked the least. He had insisted on the colours and decoration as he had in his study. She mocked him sometimes about his room with blood red walls. She even read somewhere how you could tell a lot about a person from the colours they choose for their rooms.

“Who’s lipstick is it?” Angela insisted.

“It is not lipstick. Now, where’s my dinner.” Bruno responded firmly.

“Get your own dinner.”

With that Angela shot off into their bedroom. She promptly lay down.

Something snapped inside Bruno. Perhaps it was the drink. Perhaps it was the critics. Maybe it was Angela, or a combination of all the above. But all the same he snapped and he flew after her. Finding her on their bed only made matters worse. He pounced.

Within seconds he was dragging her by her hair from the bed to the kitchen. Angela was screaming. She could not believe it. She was terrified. She pulled back and he lost his grip. She shouted something bad at him. She could never remember what. She sat up. Lying down seemed both too subservient and too risky. He walked sternly over to her and punched her across the side of the head. She fell on her side. Her head hit the floor. Thank God for the rug. Then he walked calmly over to her and kicked her hard in the stomach while she sobbed hopelessly. He kicked her so hard that she thought she had lost forever the ability to breath.

But as she discovered a few days later she had lost much more. She had lost their unborn daughter. And so too, that terrible night, she now realized she also lost her husband. For from then on the beatings became a regular part of their lives and so too his infidelities. For the next fifteen years of her life she lived in terror. Sometimes he beat her so badly that she thought she would die. He would nurse her back to health only to do it again. She disappeared more and more into herself. She became quieter and quieter. There was never any solace. Her withdrawal at least slowed his beatings down and made them somehow less brutal. Her subservience was her survival. Her only comfort was her dreams. So, one day she started writing them down. She hid them way in the back of the freezer and wrapped them in tin foil so no one would ever find them.

copyright ©Philip L Letts 2007