Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [67]
She took off her suit jacket. Their hotel room boasted its own bathroom, a shabby cold little room with a stained bath and a sour smell, and she had already made up her mind that she intended to use it as little as possible.
She had no idea what she could say to Alan and so she simply continued to get undressed, telling herself that he was being so vile because he had been drinking and that he would be his normal self in the morning. She had heard her mother complaining to her father when he had had a couple of G and Ts too many on a Sunday evening. Berating one’s husband for bad behaviour was simply a part of being a wife.
She would have to use the horrid bathroom to finish getting undressed, she acknowledged.
Alan was now lying back in the chair with his eyes closed. Her mouth pinched into a sour look very similar to her mother’s.
When she emerged from the bathroom ten minutes later, Alan had fallen asleep and was snoring.
Well, she certainly wasn’t going to wake him. Let him stay there and be punished for his nastiness to her when he did wake up with an aching neck.
Of course, it was a pity that he wasn’t seeing her in her beautiful négligé, but he hadn’t been at all appreciative of her lovely suit or the trouble she had gone to to look pretty for him.
Carefully skirting past him, Bella turned off the lights and climbed into the cold, slightly unaired bed.
It was the sound of Alan being sick that woke her. At first she didn’t know where she was or what the disgusting noise was, but by the time she had focused on the thin light coming from beneath the bathroom door, she was fully awake.
She watched in angry silence as Alan staggered out of the bathroom still fully dressed, and came towards the bed, swaying slightly as he stared down at her.
‘Bloody bitch,’ he swore at her savagely. ‘Bloody, bloody bitch. Well, I’ll show what you’re going to get for forcing me to marry you. There’s only one way to treat a bitch like you.’
He had pulled away the bedclothes and was on top of her before she could move, his breath rank and sour, as he kneeled over her and unbuttoned his trousers.
Bella was too furious to be afraid as she pushed him away. He had left the bathroom light on and she could see his ‘thing’. It was dark red and stiff. She looked at it dismissively.
Bella might not be interested in sex, but she wasn’t ignorant – her mother had seen to that – and anyway, Charlie, being what he was, had thoroughly enjoyed tormenting her when they had been much younger by showing her what boys had that girls didn’t, and showing her too what he could do with it with his hand.
Bella had thought the whole thing totally silly and unnecessary then, and she still did now.
Alan reached for her breast, squeezing it painfully. Irritably she pushed him away, her anger growing as he held on to her nightdress, causing the delicate lace to tear.
‘Now see what you’ve done,’ she demanded, trying to thrust him away from her.
In retaliation Alan pinned her down all the harder, pushing up her nightdress and dropping down on top of her. She could feel the ‘thing’ pressing against her body.
This was what happened when a couple got married, everyone knew that. It was what men expected and what women had to put up with.
Bella gave an impatient sigh and turned her mental attention towards the far more pleasurable activity of planning the furnishings of her new home, leaving Alan to thrust away, making odd grunts as he did so.
It was a pity her father had refused to buy them that new dining set she’d set her heart