The Scoundrel's Wife Read online

The Scoundrel's Wife

  or Living in the Shadow of Kalamity King

  Ben Langdon

  ISBN 9781476347622

  Copyright 2012 Ben Langdon

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  She stood with her hands thrust to the bottom of the sink, her fingers pressing against the stainless steel in the tepid water. Her eyes looked out of the window but she couldn't focus on anything beyond the cobwebs and desiccated insects wrapped in ghostly threads at her eye level. She had asked her husband to do something about the outside of the windows but he always had other things to attend to. He'd even suggested she go out with a broom and sweep the mess away but he knew she wouldn't, couldn't leave the front door. She wondered whether he'd said it to hurt her, or whether he really was just absent minded.

  She reached for a bowl and slid it into the murky water, half-heartedly rubbing at it with the stained sponge before lining it up with the other remnants of breakfast.

  He’d left early, a hasty exit from her Spanish omelette and darkly brewed coffee – just the way he liked it. She’d left it to breathe, like he insisted, had prepared it in his favourite I'm An Evil Genius mug, but he'd mumbled something about being late and rushed out the door, out of reach. She’d watched him from the front window, her eyes peeping from behind the curtain. The sun hadn't even managed to rise and off he’d gone, without his breakfast and without reading his paper.

  It wasn't particularly unusual.

  She pulled the plug in the sink and the water made gurgling noises. With a sigh she folded her hands into a cloth and then wandered into the living room, depositing the cloth on the bench as she left. Just inside the room she bent down to retrieve a clunky boot: all rivets and polished brass. It was heavy and she used two hands to pick it up. She blew on it and placed it neatly on the mantelpiece over the open fireplace which was never used, giving it a quick rub with the cuff of her dressing gown. She could see a fragment of her reflection and spent a few seconds just watching herself, almost waiting for the reflected self to do something, to move or make some kind of decision.

  In the end she didn't have to act, to choose a path. The telephone rang and her body moved in reaction to it, turning slowly, her feet already moving in its direction. She reached out, took the handset and cupped it to her ear.

  "Oliver residence," she said in a soft voice, while her eyes picked out some kind of oil stain on the carpet. It must have come from the boot, she thought.

  She nodded and turned away from the stain, her eyes travelling up the wall to the light above. She nodded again and then took a deep breath.

  "Yes, mother," she said. "I know."

  There was another silence and her eyes glazed over. Her free hand reached for a feather duster hanging just inside the kitchen. Everything seemed so conveniently ‘just in reach’. As she nodded again and agreed with the caller, her other hand flicked the duster against the wall.

  "Monty's not here right now."

  She shook her head and reached out to dust the three framed photographs along the mantelpiece, giving them a quick left-right swipe and then turning her attention to the solitary jetboot she had picked up earlier.

  "Goodbye mother. Yes, yes… you too."

  The call ended and the woman returned the handset to its place, moving back into the kitchen with her duster, giving arbitrary swishes along surfaces as she moved. She watched the world outside the kitchen windows again and saw one of her neighbours – the one with curly red hair and the pointy glasses – walking her two children to school. The youngest boy was wearing some kind of superhero costume although it was too big for him. Probably a hand-me-down from the older one, she thought. The way his cape dragged along the ground behind him disturbed her for some reason.

  And then she heard the radio mention his name, not the one she used, but his other one, the one almost everyone knew.

  It had been humming along in the background of her morning ritual but when she heard his name her ears seemed to focus, to hunt down the meaning in the words around it, and everything else stopped.

  "… First National on West Hartbridge Road earlier this morning. Kalamity King is clearly behind the heist and although police have cordoned off the area, sources close to the ground suggest the only way the super criminal will be stopped is the timely intervention of …"

  She flicked the radio off and glided with purpose into the living room again, picking up the remote control and firing off an infrared beam towards the plasma screen which sat hulking in the corner. Visuals crackled into being and leapt across the surface, but she had to skip several channels before she found one which was reporting on the bank heist downtown. There had been a time when he commanded the attention of all the channels. Her mouth turned down at the edges. She could feel the stretch of wrinkles, lifted her hand to her mouth and covered it. Her breathing had stopped. Momentarily.

  She sat down on the sofa, perched on the edge while dislodging the black and white cat; searching the backgrounds and looking beyond the prim reporter's head towards the bank building. She could see the canary yellow police cordons, the hypnotic flash of the emergency vehicles and the movement of spectators and experts, but there was no sign of her husband.

  A minute past and half a dozen advertisements, but still there was no confirmation that Kalamity King was involved. She wondered how long he had planned the heist, if it was him, and whether he should have taken the coffee with him now that he had found himself slightly detained within a police cordon. She’d prepared a travel mug, just in case, but he hadn't stayed long enough for her to make the offer. He’d simply rushed out of the door, letting it slam backward like it usually did. She hated that sound, the vibration sweeping through the entire house. It had upset her for quite some time.

  The reporter continued to mouth generic comments and make vague promises about new and urgent incoming information, but she had seen this kind of reporting before. The woman kept the television on but stood and picked up the duster again, turning around the room to look for something to polish or clear away. The cat's tail disappeared towards the bedrooms. She kept scanning the room, enjoying the electric hum that seemed to be coming from the news report now that she had decided to block out the reporter's diatribe. The bookshelves were full and overflowing in places. Her worn romances lay jumbled amongst his spectacularly dull science journals and thick tomes of improbable science. She gave them a token sweep of the duster and then rested her hand on the bronze bust of Nietzsche which served as a bookend and also contained the so-called secret lever which revealed her husband's private study. The lever slid easily down and immediately the bookcase rolled back into the wall. She had known about the study since it had been installed, of course. There were no secrets between them, at least not in the beginning.

  She walked slowly down the four half-circle steps and breathed in the specially generated air which her husband had organised as some kind of fail-safe mechanism in case of a siege or a nuclear war or some such thing.

  The room was almost as large as the house itself, at least in length. Lights flickered on as she stood there, her duster in both hands. To her left was a row of jars, three shelves high, all containing remnants of experiments or trophies of successes. She stepped along with her eyes on the top row, taking in the amber liquid and various contents. A rat floated, forever suspended in the liquid, its tail curled up almost as if in sleep. Beside it was a hand, probably human, with a wedding band still attached. She used to know the name of the hand's owner, but it escaped her as she gave the jar a quick swish of the duster.

  The jars with the babies always drew her gaze.

  She stood and looked at them, her mouth giving away nothing: just a slit in her pale face. Some of the babies had toes, some had eyes
. The one she always moved to had large, fish-like eyes which stared outward but saw nothing.

  She realised her hand was resting on her belly.

  She moved on, turning her back on the rows of experiments and focussed on cleaning the miniscule dust from her husband's collection of ray guns and the balsa wood models of death traps which he spent hours designing, down to the most intricate details, but never seemed to find the time to build to full scale. He always had something more pressing, some scheme that demanded his immediate and full attention.

  It was funny, she thought, that everything seemed so important in the moment. She looked around the study and noticed the colour of the walls was fading. Upstairs the house was also aging, from the appliances to the insulation, to the rotting floor in the laundry. She wondered how long it