The moment I saw the Bedouin I knew I was right - my wife was cheating on me.
It was night, March, close to two am, and I - coffee addict, smoker, late night worker - was climbing the stairs when I glanced out of the window facing the back garden, overlooking the unmown lawn, the unkempt shrubberies around it and the untrimmed box hedge that separated our garden from the fields. The Bedouin stood against the box hedge, his black robes blending with the night-darkened leaves. Had it not been for the full moon and the pristine sky I would have missed him completely. As it was I only caught sight of him by the glints of light that shimmered over a jeweled clasp or pin he wore on the turban or similar thing that covered his entire head.
I stood on the stairs, leaning on the windowsill, my breath caught in my chest, blocked presumably by my heart in my mouth. I had finally found the interloper who, once a month, snuck into my house at my wife's behest.
Violet - Violet Bloch, formerly Violet Sturbridge, née Violet Kimberley - was the woman who owned me, heart soul and bank account. I, love-struck, penurious, unable to write from worrying about money and running out of cash for coffee, had thrown myself at her porcelain feet and begged her to marry me. She, merciful, gracious, superb in all the refinements of manner and speech that make woman more a woman than any amount of silk and powder and lace, agreed on two conditions. First, I should never ask her of the circumstances of the demise of her late husband, Thomas Sturbridge. I never understood why, since he dropped dead of heart failure on the platform at King's Cross and never a word was asked. Second, I should not go into her little dressing room, her powder room she called it although it was just a small box room attached to her study, nor should I enquire why she chose to sleep there once a month. I, luckiest man on earth, flattered her from the toes upwards, crowned her with praise, sat down to write a book of poetry whose royalties helped pay for the honeymoon and thanked my guardian angel-cum-muse.
Standing on the staircase, heart pulsing unpleasantly in the nauseating throb of a panic attack, all fear of cardiac arrest evicted by the sight of a tall Bedouin lurking amongst the shrubbery, I wanted a cigarette but knew Violet would notice something amiss if I lit up outside of my study. She was asleep in her dressing room, with her study and the bathroom between her and our bedroom, out of sight and sound and with the massive twenty-year-old climbing rose coiling discreetly around her window.
The Bedouin in the bushes had not moved an inch. I wondered how long he would wait, how long he'd been there, how long he'd been coming here. Did his relationship with Violet predate mine? Was this why she asked me not to ask of Sturbridge's death? Had he worried himself to death, the way I felt I might do right now on the stairs? Was I a paranoid fool mistaking a tree-trunk for a cuckoo-man? I would've accounted him for a burglar if he hadn't appeared on the one night a month my wife slept in her dressing room, and if he weren't covered in those long black robes. I pondered them to be bed sheets, but they hung too well, and anyway, what burglar dresses in black bed sheets in order to appear a Bedouin?
At that moment, I wished very fervently that I owned a gun.
Instead I froze at the window, staring and staring at this black-clad interloper standing statue-like in front of my box hedge. As my stricture of fright passed, the focus of my vision widened to include more than just this Bedouin fence-climber, and dialed out to include the fence itself. God! The man was more than a foot taller than the fence! He must be over seven feet tall!
My thoughts of what my wife wanted with a seven-foot son of the desert do not bear repeating. Suffice it to say I had always known she hadn't married me for my body, me being inertia-prone, dreamsical, addicted to nicotine and forgetful of the existence of my razor. I had never considered myself so lacking as to be unmanly, but the thought of my Violet and this presumably camel-scented intruder appalled me.
The creeping worm of suspicion gnawed into another fruit of knowledge. Was this man someone I knew? Could it be an acquaintance, a friend of my wife from before we were married? Even a friend of mine? But I had no seven-foot tall friends, let alone ones inclined to dress up as Bedouins for the purposes of adultery.
There. I'd thought it.
Was this a man who'd known my wife before she was my wife? That thought made me feel the interloper, the intruder. But why continue to hide such an affair after Sturbridge's death? Violet had been a widow for four years before I came along. Perhaps the man was married? Married to a wealthy woman whom he could not divorce for fear of poverty?
Wait, no, that was me.
That brought me back to myself, and the present moment, the night breeze ruffling the box hedge and the Bedouin's robes, the cold moonlight shining on his jeweled headband and my gaping face. I quickly stepped back from the window, rubbed my face, thought to look again, thought better of it, churned with fear, then came to a plan.
Accordingly, I went up the stairs, cried "Good night, love!" to my wife I had done on such nights previously, unexpected Bedouins aside, went into the bathroom and relieved myself of everything except anxiety. I made certain to make a fuss with the taps, and to knock over the loose bath-towel rack and swear over it. Violet could not be but assured that I was making my sleepy way to the realms of dark unconsciousness, that whilst I was safe in the arms of Morpheus she would be safe in the arms of her anonymous seven-foot rose-climber.
Bloody hell, I thought, how can a seven-foot-tall Bedouin go unremarked upon around here? He must come from miles away. Still, that wasn't so strange. I'd come from miles away just to see Violet. I did, when I was courting her; she cost me a small fortune in shoes and bus-tickets. I wondered what she was costing him.
I didn't like the pang of sympathy that thought made me feel.
I stumbled into my bedroom, shuffled around pretending to undress, flopped loudly onto my bed and waited.
How long will they wait? I wondered, staring at the ceiling, blue-grey in the darkness. How would I know when he came in? Would I know when he came in? Was I imagining things? Had I mistaken a lost bin-bag for a thief in the night?
My heart thumped agonizingly, palpitating from too much coffee and nicotine and stress. My editor told me only that afternoon that I was sounding strained, and my last short story had been clunky, prosaic, formulaic. Did I perhaps need a rest? Was I having a nervous breakdown? Did I need a holiday!
Oh, God, no! To go away and leave my wife alone with him? Never! I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth until the blood thundered in my eardrums. I might not be much to look at, and I'd never win a footrace, but I'd sooner fight and be beaten into a bloody pulp than let some nameless person of origins unknown perform unspecified acts of adultery with Violet!
I heard the rattle of her window opening.
My heart tripped over into triple time; the only other time I've felt anything like it was after an entire bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans, and I thought that was going to kill me. I thought this was going to kill me. I thought I was going to kill him. I listened, cold sweat tracing prickles down my spine, so tense my elbows dug painfully into my ribs and my fists felt like knots of wood.
The window rattled shut. I thought I heard the soft pad of footsteps, a sense of movement - was I hearing real things, or just hearing things? My jaw was so tightly clenched I thought I might crack my teeth. Even balled into fists my hands still shook.
What was he doing to her?
I was up and off the bed and at the bedroom door before I realized I'd moved, and I stopped dead with my hand on the door handle. Had they heard me? I listened; I heard silence. Were they listening? Were they there to listen? Had Violet perhaps snuck out of the window for an assignation in the shrubbery?
In March? Not bloody likely.
I thought I smelt something strange, something different. A very faint scent, one that could hardly be caught though the years of smoking that have wrecked my sense of smell, but I was sure it was there. Something familiar and repulsive. Something I'd smelt before.
Had I smelt the scent of this unknown intruder on my wife before? Oh God!
I reached for the bluntest object in the room - a great geode, mounted on a block of wood, an award, mine, for speculative fiction. The thing was almost too big to hold in one hand and at that moment felt like it weighed about seven tons. With all the stealth I could muster from writing stories about adventurous people, I opened the door.
The door handle squeaked.
I froze; I listened. I heard nothing. I wanted to scream.
Were they keeping quiet to avert suspicion? Were they otherwise distracted? My stomach roiled and threatened to eject its contents, then remembered it contained nothing but midnight's coffee. I tasted bile.
I snuck down the hallway, feeling like a burglar in my own invaded home. My sock-clad feet were nowhere near as silent as the moth's wing-beats I imagined this desert scion could pick out, if he wasn't too busy listening to tender words from my wife.
I knew then I wanted very, very badly to kill this man. That thought shocked me far less than how little I minded it.
I reached Violet's study and opened the door with sneakiness. The door, I felt blessed to not hear, didn't squeak; it was old and barely closed anyway.
From the dressing room I heard soft sounds - the faint rustle of cloth, the almost inaudible blur of whispers - and I felt the gentle vibration of footsteps through the floor.
The son of a bitch was there!
With three great strides I leapt across the room, half-spraining my right foot as I did so, and tried to tear open the door before realizing it opened inwards. Hearing the sudden sounds of movement within, I flung open the door and charged in, geode raised, stopped dead and screamed.
My wife, beautiful, terrified, clad in a silk negligee that made my pulse race on any other night, was held to the chest of this tall dark stranger, his black robes embroidered with threads of gold, his turban pinned with a jeweled clasp. He clasped a black-swathed arm around her shoulder, the other arm raised to fend me off. His black turban-thing had fallen away from this face, the golden beads of his jeweled pin dangling brightly, and I saw traces of Violet's lipstick on his bare teeth and raw, skinless, scraped-to-the-bone skull. He towered over me, bare bloody-bones arm raised to ward me off, and stared at me with eyes of wet blackness that glinted and moved like living eyes.
I screamed again, my wife screamed, this skeletal giant opened his jawbone and uttered a deep sound like a click and a hiss at once. He had no tongue, no nose, no skin, no face but living blood-spotted bone.
At the sight of his flesh-stripped hand resting bare and bone-fingered on my wife's shoulder some reserve of untapped testosterone spurred me forward. With a third scream - a cry of rage and denial - I rush forwards, half-tripping on the carpet, and swung the geode at his flensed face.
The sharp crystals crunched on bone, spattering blood and ragged flesh, and my arm was halfway wrenched from my shoulder at the impact. My hand went numb, I dropped the geode, the thing staggered back with a deep cry that made every window-frame in the house shake. It swung at me with its great fleshless hand, swatting me across the face. Its hand was warm, its bones rough, the rags of flesh between them wet. I felt blood smeared across my face. The blow felled me, not injured but vomiting, heaving in revulsion.
I retched helplessly, hearing my wife scream, as Death himself loomed over me. I saw him cast about, glancing at the geode, at the part-open window, at my beautiful, shocked, slightly bloodstained wife. He looked at her, the shredded muscles of his face shifting in an expression of pain and despair, his hand outstretched to her in a pleading gesture known to all the heartbroken.
Violet cried out, shaking her head, holding out her blood-wet hands to him as he turned from her, tears on her face.
He moved like a blur, a sheet blown in the wind, flowing. I saw blood and bone and black and gold pass before me, to the window, and fold into a moving shadow that slipped through the narrow space and was gone into the night.
Then I was horribly sick all over again.