Kristina and the Crunchy Potato

MF interr

©Sister Innocenta

It was, she shrugged, rather unfair but it wasn’t in the nature of Life to be fair. Colleagues, when asked for input, tended to approach such situations from a loyalty perspective rather than as disinterested arbiters. She recalled how just the other day James’s rantings about his wife’s coldness had elicited more sympathy than even James could cope with, when—to be fair—his wife had a point. None of them would care to live with James, but at work his acerbic wit could trick a smile out of the grumpiest secretary. Besides which, she sighed, all was considered fair in love and war—though which this was, Kristina would have been hard pressed to say.

The chair protested half-heartedly as Phillip leaned back, resting his palms on the armrests. Cocking his chin defiantly, he hit the “send” button and watched the message vanish from his monitor, unleashing who-knows-what consequences further down the line. Phillip was not known for his diplomacy but then, he wasn’t employed to be diplomatic, he was employed to be effective and Phillip’s effectiveness was well known. He’d been headhunted for precisely that reason, and had turned things around all right. His boss, the model of diplomacy, spent more and more time soothing bruised egos in his wake but this was a small price to pay. Sitting in Board meetings where the results spoke for themselves, he harvested an abundance of justification and Phillip knew this. He was untouchable.

He picked up the phone to dial Kristina’s number, paused… Lolly would need to be fetched from music in just under an hour. That would be cutting it a little fine but, having thought of Kristina, Phillip couldn’t shake the image. She gripped as tightly around his mind as around his body which, awakened to her memory, was making its demands known. He dialled.

The queue in the department store snaked around endlessly but Angie resolutely joined it, her heaped basket too great a prize to foreswear for the sake of convenience. She was in no rush, after all. Phillip would fetch Lolly from music, Graham was already at home watching videos and they would be going to Phillip’s father for supper. She turned around on hearing her name and smiled politely. Wendy, one of the secretaries from Phillip’s office, greeted her and she responded unenthusiastically. If Wendy could afford to shop here, she thought, Phillip is paying her too much. Wendy was commenting on the contents of Angie’s basket—how well the grey would suit her—and Angie recoiled at the violation of her space.

“It’s for Lolly”, she replied curtly. “I find grey very drab, myself. ”

Wendy smiled. “Yes, I imagine it will suit her just as well. You’re very similar—just the other day we were commenting in the office that Lolly may as well have been a clone. But for the age difference, you could be identical twins. Phillip didn’t get a look in there.”

Angie winced. Not simply because she knew Lolly was considered ugly—even as her mother, Angie had to admit that Lolly would not attract suitors through her looks. At seventeen, Lolly showed no signs of outgrowing the adolescent awkwardness either—her friends had shed their chrysalises and emerged as stunning young women, confident and privileged, while Lolly remained… well, plain. Angie’s discomfort was due in large part to a nasty suspicion that this woman knew more than she was letting on about Lolly’s parentage. Phillip would never have breathed a word—he more than anyone stood to lose. Wendy, pleased at the effect of her remark, pointed out generously to Angie that the cashier was waiting, as was the rest of the queue, if she’d not noticed…

Kristina snuggled closer to Phillip. The winter sun was low in the sky and, the fury of lovemaking having abated, a chill was starting to settle. Phillip, snoring lightly, shifted imperceptibly away. Kristina sighed, slipped out of the bed and stood long enough in the shower to use up almost all the hot water. She dressed, went to the kitchen and made some coffee. She left a cup next to the still sleeping Phillip, switched on the answering machine and pulled the door shut behind her.

Driving to the meeting, she allowed her mind to caress the store of fond memories she relied on more and more to offset the coalescing negative aspects of her relationship with Phillip. She hadn’t wanted any involvement with him, not because he was married but because his worldview was so different to hers. She would have argued vociferously that class, race and age don’t matter, that who someone is transcends such labels. She still held that viewpoint but somehow, uneasily, she had to admit that it wasn’t quite that simple. She resented the sense of adventure that drove him to visit her in an area he’d not otherwise have felt safe in. His continued treating of her—buying her expensive presents, feeding her in upmarket restaurants, sneaking away for weekends in remote, but lavish, hotels—seemed more and more patronising. She ought to have trusted her gut instinct, rather than her intellectual position but, having made her bed, she was now sharing it. She smiled wryly, wondering if he’d woken yet.

The initial thrill—she’d eventually relented in the wake of his sheer persistence—of the illicit relationship had gradually given way to complacence. She’d left her Struggle job to join him as a Special Assistant at his company—a vague position containing whatever Phillip or Kristina chose to include: everything and yet nothing. She worked very closely with Phillip—hard, satisfying work—but depended on him in a way she found uncomfortable. And whatever she felt about race and class differences, her new colleagues needed a lot of input before they reconsidered their prejudices. Their reserve, she admitted, was probably also due to her relationship with Phillip. New to office politics, she’d from the outset called him by his name, assumed equality and had been blind to the nuances of pecking orders and hard-won privileges. From his side, he’d treated her differently from the others, elevating her in ways that raised eyebrows and no doubt generated gossip. If she hadn’t been so captivated by the excitement, she might have paid more attention, been a little more sensitive, invested more in her colleagues. It was only recently that she’d been invited to join them shopping at lunchtime, asked to the pub after work for a beer, included in the grapevine. This acceptance had, predictably, created some distance between Kristina and Phillip. He was no longer her intermediary, and—to his chagrin—she came to information via the grapevine before he did through the official channels. Feeling his power undermined, Phillip withdrew in subtle ways, emotionally—but not physically.

Phillip, waking to the cold coffee, reached out for Kristina. He drew the duvet around him disappointedly, anticipating the cold shower and colder reception at home where Lolly would most likely be regaling Angie with his thoughtlessness at forgetting about her. At such times he shared Kristina’s view that Lolly was spoiled and, no doubt, overindulged as a result of his guilt. He would snap at Lolly ruthlessly, reducing everyone to tears. He could redeem himself only by expensive, meaningless gestures. He wondered whether he should go home at all or wait here for Kristina to return from her meeting, all fired up about some cause or another, and seduce her passionate body back into bed.

Angie was incapable of arousing lust in Phillip—in anyone, the women at Phillip’s company sneered. Their marriage had been platonic for all of its eighteen years—amiable enough, for the most part, but that was about it. Lolly had been the result of a fling with Angie’s ex-husband, a fact so glaringly obvious within the relationship that they had never discussed it. And Graham—well, who knew? Angie had been too distraught to say. Their birth certificates claimed, and the rest of the world believed, that they had been conceived normally within their parents’ marriage. Apart from Kristina, that is. Phillip had confessed to Kristina in a moment of lust that she alone was capable of inflaming him to such heights of passion—or any heights, for that matter. And Kristina, whose smooth brown body offset his white hairiness so perfectly, had simply accepted that this was so. Kristina didn’t pry, didn’t accuse, didn’t judge. Her calm acceptance reassured Phillip, affirmed him, allowed him to relax and trust her. Phillip surprised himself by finding his heart aching for Kristina as much as his body.

Kristina’s body, warm and relaxed, slipped from the car into the chilly evening. She hugged closer the warm, burgundy coat Phillip had insisted on buying her on one of their weekends away. That was the weekend, she remembered, when Phillip had required emergency surgery for a piece of glass he had ingested—completely unaware. Afterward he recalled wondering briefly why the potato was “so crunchy”—but just for a second, before his attention returned to Kristina, and how the burgundy in her glass offset her skin tone so engagingly. Kristina laughed, remembering how she had taken control, signed the consent papers as Mrs. Blake, played the concerned wife at Phillip’s bedside. The X-rays, medical reports and hospital receipts had been stored at her house subsequently, away from prying eyes who had been assured that the scar was superficial, the result of a fall on a mountain walk.

It had been easier for Kristina to return to that same radiologist as Mrs. Blake, than to visit a doctor in this town where she was so well known through her activism in the health sector. The scan—more than a month ago now—had confirmed her suspicions. Five months pregnant—now safely past six and safe from the pressure to abort which she knew would follow the revelation. And the accusations that she had planned it, somehow trapped Phillip as a helpless victim… Phillip, whose assumption that contraception was a woman’s prerogative, whose fertility would generate much debate. Whose future looked increasingly uncertain. Kristina shrugged off thoughts of Phillip and went in to the meeting. Her life did not revolve around Phillip, after all.

Stephen Blake looked up from the family tree on his desk resignedly. Angie’s frantic phone call advising him that the family would be late had been welcome—he’d suggested rescheduling, but she wouldn’t hear of it. It seemed she was desperate to get out of the house, to have other people present. Stephen had used the time well—a visit to his attorney to sign into power the amended will he’d hung over Phillip’s head as a threat since the first rumblings of marital discord with Angie. Denise’s roast drying out in the oven was likely to be ignored when Phillip and Angie finally did arrive—the documents Denise had received in the mail would certainly see to that. He had done his bit, he reassured himself—although he had disinherited Phillip, his heirs were well provided for. Stephen’s blood heirs, he stressed to himself. Only Graham and the unborn child. Denise, with access to her own means, would no doubt ensure that Kristina was financially cared for.

The noise of Phillip and Angie’s bickering reached Stephen before the dog barked. Denise, armed with years of suspicion and a bundle of documents sent to her by a Kristina—not Blake, but who?—awaited them resolutely in the lounge. Stephen, confronted with the prospect of the revelation of his own role in Graham’s conception, waited for the doorbell to ring, pulled the trigger and slumped forward on his desk, splattering the family tree with blood the colour of burgundy.