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The Cumberland Sausage

AJ Lyndon

     “Traffic wasn’t bad for once,” I trill. “Plenty of time before your flight. Shall we grab a bite to eat in the cafe? My treat.”
    “OK, ta.” A flicker of surprise. Usually, I drop him and drive away, leaving him hefting the portfolio of art, and the hard-shell suitcase. He never could travel light. We are in my car, not his. Yes, it belongs to the chocolate manufacturer I work for but, for all that, it is mine, not his.
    When he drives it instead of his, to save petrol, I tell myself it is because I permit it, not because I dare not refuse. Just as I dared not refuse when he instructed me to order a manual car through the fleet manager, not an automatic. “You know I won’t drive automatics,” he says matter-of-factly, end of story. I tell the fleet manager I would prefer a manual gear box. “Are you sure?” he asks in some surprise. “The automatic is more expensive, but your grade entitles you to one.”
    “No, really. I always drive manual cars,” I mumble. He shrugs his shoulders.
    “Your choice.” If only it was.
    There is a single terminal at our local airport. “International” the name proclaims proudly for there are flights to Europe - Corfu, Malaga, Tenerife. One café and a small shop selling newspapers, sweets, crisps, cigarettes. The car park is half empty on the warm, mid-week summer evening. Weekends are busy with charter flights. One-week or two-week package holidays, Cosmos or Thomas Cook. Saturday is “changeover” day, when clean sheets and towels go into the guest rooms. Sunday is the “welcome evening” in the hotels when everyone books their daytrips by coach. By Tuesday, the tour desks in the hotels are empty but for panicked last-minute queries. “Where can I change money? Is lunch included? Will there be a stop for shopping? Toilet breaks?”
    I park near the terminal. As usual he brushes aside my offers of further assistance, fishing in his man-bag for passport, tickets. He is dressed in his usual travel wear, somewhere between Don Johnson in Miami Vice and a young Robert de Niro. A crumpled linen jacket over a white tshirt, sneakers, no socks. A watch on his wrist but no wedding band. It inhibits his cultivating female clients, he claims.
    As we trundle towards the terminal I bask in the unaccustomed warmth, the feeling of the sun on my bared arms and legs. He glances uneasily at my short sundress and I twitch the hem lower, apologetically. He likes me dressing modestly.
    “How many travelling?”
    “Just me,” he replies to the woman on the check-in desk, flashing her the charming trademark smile he reserves for the outside world. “Unless you’d like to come too?”
    He deposits the heavy suitcase on the scales, lifting it one-handed. I remember admiring that strength, feeling protected by it.
    Bag checked in, we traipse towards the café side by side, him clutching the man-bag, boarding pass and portfolio which mark him as a traveller, me the handbag and car keys of the woman heading home to suburbia and another early morning commute.
    A sprinkling of people in the café, holiday makers heading for southern Europe, the men in shorts, the women carefully made up, earrings dangling towards shoulders already bared in expectation of A Tan. Floor to ceiling windows give a view of the runway. A small boy kneels up on a chair, making “vroom” noises.
    “Ssh, Gareth,” his mother urges. I look away. Even after so many years the hurt remains. No children in our lives taking my attention away from him. “He’ll come round to the idea,” friends had comforted me. They were wrong.
    “What’ll you have? Chili? Something with chips?” I ask. We take two trays and approach the self-service counter. Sparkling water for him, tea for me. I have – what do I have? I don’t recall, but he has the “special”, Cumberland sausage, egg and chips, though we are far from Cumberland, now part of the northern English county of Cumbria. Despite it being the “special”, his sausage is not ready, must be cooked. We stand at the counter while the server disappears kitchen-wards. “How long for the Cumberland?” I hear her shout.
    I clutch the tray until my knuckles turn white, hoping he will not make a scene, smash something. Wary of the presence of security, he usually keeps his temper under control at airports, but I cannot be sure. After a minute or so his foot begins to tap, and I hold my breath, but now the woman is returning, tea towel wrapped about the hot plate. “There you are, love.” The long, fat, brown sausage glistens with grease as it curls about itself, squeezing chips and fried egg to the side of the plate.
    “Separate or together?” the girl on the cash desk asks. “Together,” I say, handing over my credit card. We sit on plastic and metal chairs at the small table fixed to the floor. Like a pair of glass “drinking birds”, we fix our glances on our plates, pecking at them.
    He carves away at the coil of sausage, his movements careless, diffident. “I eat because I must, not for pleasure,” they proclaim. “I am a cerebral being and this is part of the animal in me. Ingesting food belongs with shitting and pissing, with fucking.”
    He shakes back his ponytail, brushes a morsel of sauce off his pointed beard with a paper napkin and lays down his knife, his meal complete. He dislikes eating in public.
    “I’ll call you, maybe tomorrow, maybe another evening. I expect you to be home. And don’t forget my car service tomorrow.”
    “No, Humphrey.”
    “Before you go to work. And pick it up in the afternoon. I don’t want it sitting on the forecourt overnight.”
    “Yes.” I switch to what I hope is a safer subject. “Was it nice? The Cumberland sausage?”
    “Fills a gap. Throw it down and throw it up.” As if to emphasise the point he belches into the paper serviette, neatly folded on his plate beside the empty water bottle.
    “If you’ve finished eating you may as well go,” he says coldly. I check my watch. A sunny evening but an hour’s drive nonetheless.
    “OK, I suppose so, Humphrey. Work tomorrow.”
    “Oh yes, work,” he sneers, a heavy emphasis on the last word. In that one syllable he expresses contempt for my mundane office job which pays the bills. We get to our feet. He takes a packet of pills from the man-bag and dry swallows.
    “Wait here. I’m going for a piss.”
    The little boy has also finished eating. He has curls at the back of his neck. His father swings him into the air and upside down over his shoulder. The child squeals with delight.
    “Simon, put him down. He’ll be sick.” They wander off together, the child swinging from their hands.
    Crisp footsteps in the echoing, empty hall. Humphrey returning, wiping his hands carefully on a cloth handkerchief, one of the many I wash and iron into points.
    “Well then. Have a good trip.”
    He purses his full lips.
    “I’ll see you in a week in Arrivals. Flight lands at 16.45. Tell that bitch you work for you need to leave work early. Don’t keep me waiting like that other time. Remember, actions have fucking consequences.”
    Yes, they do, they did, but not anymore.
    “Well?” I am standing staring at him.
    “Nothing. Good...luck.” He does not kiss me. He shuns public displays of affection. I try to recall when he last kissed me in private.
    He marches towards the security gate for departing passengers without a backward glance. I watch as he puts the man-bag and his folded jacket in a tray, the portfolio in another, walks through the scanner, one hand on his belt to show the metal buckle in case it beeps. It doesn’t. The sliding doors close behind him, and he is gone.
    A handful of cars remain in the car park. I quicken my pace, activating the remote. The lights glow a welcoming amber in the fading light.
    I open the driver’s door and climb in, locking it as he has instructed me. Tonight, the air is warm with a heat more familiar from holidays in Spain and Greece than England. I can almost hear the cicadas. My sundress rides up and my thighs stick to the seat. It doesn’t matter, for he is not there to see it.
    As I drive towards the exit, I wind down the window. A small aircraft is taxiing, propeller spinning. It gathers speed. The nose lifts, the wheels skim the surface, it soars towards the pink-streaked western sky and freedom.
    I indicate, ram the gear stick into third to give me the necessary acceleration, and enter the slip road. A moment later I brake sharply and pull onto the hard shoulder. Hazard lights on, I tug at my finger. I have gained weight in the last ten years and the wedding band has tightened, loathe to let go of me. A moment of panic and then I force it over the knuckle, dropping the gold circle into the unused ashtray. There are indentations from the metal. I switch off the hazard lights and accelerate. My own take off.
    “Good luck,” I had said when I meant “Goodbye”. The bruises on my body would soon be nothing but a memory. Those on my soul would take many years to heal.

 

This was first accepted for publication by Potato Soup journal.

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