Cuckoo by Wendy Perriam Page A

cummerbunds. Ned’s dandelion had turned into an orchid.
    â€˜I like you, Frances,’ he whispered, as he entwined it in her hair.
    The music had surged back, bludgeoning the silence of the bedroom, though she could still hear his voice throbbing and strumming above it.
    Strange how loud and clear the line was, now.

Chapter Four
    â€˜Charles, please .’
    â€˜For God’s sake, Frances, I can’t.’
    â€˜Can’t? You mean won’t.’
    â€˜Look, I’m sorry, but I’m totally non-operational at the moment. I’ve got a hell of a problem on.’
    â€˜You’ve always got problems. I’m getting sick of it. Your work comes between us like a great Berlin Wall. We can never relax because the bank rate’s up, or the exchange rate’s down, or the balance of payments is precarious.’
    â€˜Well, this time, it’s nothing to do with work.’
    â€˜I don’t believe you.’
    â€˜In fact, I really ought to talk to you about it.’
    There, he’d got it out at last. He’d have to tell her sometime, so it might as well be now. Except he didn’t have the words. All his life he’d got to grips with things, papered over problems, talked his way through crises. But, now, he was dumb. He couldn’t even concentrate on the latest tax concessions from Zug. He was struggling through the German text, but all he could see were his wife’s accusing eyes tripping him up on every printed page. He had come home from the airport, laden with his Glenfiddich and her Chanel, flushed with achievement, happy to be back. Coq au vin for dinner, an Ashkenazy concert on the radio, and eight blessed hours’ sleep without a mosquito net, or prayer calls wailing through the dawn.
    The next morning, a phone call. One brief call and his world in smithereens. Frances’ world hadn’t even flickered. She didn’t know, she couldn’t know. And here she was, bleating on about a child, when the very word suddenly made him sick.
    If only it hadn’t been fucking day thirteen. Just his luck – her temperature had fallen on the morning he came home, that vital little dip she waited for so avidly each month. Day twelve, day thirteen, day fourteen – that’s all he ever heard. The whole universe was centred on his wife’s Fallopian tubes. She had her own private clock and calendar, set differently from everybody else’s. If they were toasting Christmas, she was weeping because her period had come. If Russia dropped an atom bomb on Richmond, she’d still be lying there, taking her temperature for a full three minutes by her watch. Christ, how tired he was of that passion-killing thermometer, the way it ruled their lives.
    He rubbed his eyes, tried to make sense of his economic forecasts. God Almighty! Frances’ little blue dots were straying even here. He couldn’t see his own charts, only the one-degree fall on hers. Frances had marked it with as much elation as if it were a dramatic fall in the minimum lending rate. The little blue dot swelled into an accusing finger. He was meant to chase it up, turn it from a paper cypher into something bigger and more permanent. He couldn’t. There was nothing there between his legs – only jet-lag.
    He put his work away. You couldn’t plot financial trends from the data of a woman’s menstrual cycle. Frances was sitting in the bedroom, trickling Chanel between her breasts. He watched her in the mirror, draped in her best satin nightie, and wearing anguish like a decoration. He had never liked the nightie and he couldn’t cope with anguish. He was damned if he’d allow her to lure him into bed, and then be forced to lie beside her like some limp laughing stock. And yet he cared for her – loved her even, if he dared use such a word. That’s what made the whole thing so disastrous. He walked across and kissed her on the throat.
    â€˜I’m sorry,