Linda and Niall have a
problem that Niall doesn’t know they have. Niall is letting himself go, and
Linda anticipating his embarrassment and fury, doesn’t dare mention it.
She has been on the
receiving end, and knows full well how much it hurts and humiliates. Six years
before she and Niall began, Tony, with a couple of pints more than tact would
have poured, observed one Sunday afternoon that she was acquiring much to sit
on, and he wasn’t talking about a chair. For the next few weeks, she could
hardly bear to be around him, knowing how distasteful he, the voracious cyclist
and footballer, apparently found the half-stone she’d gained since having
Mandy. When he realised she was doing everything in her power to minimise
interaction with him, he implored her not to shoot the messenger, inspiring her
to think, “You self-righteous knobhead.” In a tone with which one might have
scoured a pot, she reminded him of the for better/for worse clause of their
wedding day promises to each other. He seemed to feel chastened, but not so
badly that he didn’t point out that it was incongruous for one so fastidious
about her hair and nails and makeup and attire to neglect her physique. It was
only after buying herself a gym membership and undertaking the rigorous workout
programme she’d maintained ever since that she was able to relax around him.
When she regained the slimness that he’d loved — and on which she’d prided
herself — he was hugely proud of her, but no prouder than she was of herself.
She didn’t fail to recognise
her former self in Niall. He got a manicure fortnightly, and a haircut every
three weeks, and his eyebrows shaped three times a year. He used an expensive
brand of toothpaste that promised to whiten one’s teeth, and really did seem to whiten his. He drank his
coffee through a straw to not undo the toothpaste’s work. He was the local dry
cleaner’s best customer. She teased him about using more moisturiser than any
other heterosexual man in the UK. And she’d ceased months earlier to be able to
pretend not to notice his belly.
She put on kid gloves
to broach the subject, asking over dinner one evening if he’d seen the news
item about the heretofore-unrealised benefits of daily exercise. His father had
had Alzheimer’s, which researchers had discovered those who worked out a lot
to be considerably more likely to elude. “Oh, no,” he moaned with his customary petulance, “not all that again. Have we not been through
this enough already? Maybe I’m not fanatical about it like you, bu I do exercise.”
Which was to say that he
played golf five times a month, riding from hole to hole in a motorised cart. It occurred to her to point out, in gentler words, that the proof of the pudding was in the eating, and that he'd come to look like one who'd eaten a great deal of pudding. Instead, she bit her lip.
She loved him, but her
adoration didn’t make his belly any more easily ignored. She told herself that her
waning desire for him was fine, since even the most ardent couples grew weary
of sex with each other after a while, and hadn’t their first three years been
exceptionally ardent? But she couldn’t fool herself for long. The thought of
going gentle into that good night of erotic indifference to her husband felt a little
bit like a death sentence.
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