The Bride Stripped Bare Read online

  THE

  BRIDE

  STRIPPED

  BARE

  A NOVEL

  Nikki Gemmell

  Dedication

  For my husband. For every husband.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  Lesson 1

  Lesson 2

  Lesson 3

  Lesson 4

  Lesson 5

  Lesson 6

  Lesson 7

  Lesson 8

  Lesson 9

  Lesson 10

  Lesson 11

  Lesson 12

  Lesson 13

  Lesson 14

  Lesson 15

  Lesson 16

  Lesson 17

  Lesson 18

  Lesson 19

  Lesson 20

  Lesson 21

  Lesson 22

  Lesson 23

  Lesson 24

  Lesson 25

  Lesson 26

  2

  Lesson 27

  Lesson 28

  Lesson 29

  Lesson 30

  Lesson 31

  Lesson 32

  Lesson 33

  Lesson 34

  Lesson 35

  Lesson 36

  Lesson 37

  Lesson 38

  Lesson 39

  Lesson 40

  Lesson 41

  Lesson 42

  Lesson 43

  Lesson 44

  Lesson 45

  Lesson 46

  Lesson 47

  Lesson 48

  Lesson 49

  Lesson 50

  Lesson 51

  Lesson 52

  Lesson 53

  Lesson 54

  Lesson 55

  Lesson 56

  Lesson 57

  Lesson 58

  Lesson 59

  Lesson 60

  Lesson 61

  Lesson 62

  Lesson 63

  Lesson 64

  Lesson 65

  Lesson 66

  Lesson 67

  Lesson 68

  Lesson 69

  Lesson 70

  Lesson 71

  Lesson 72

  Lesson 73

  Lesson 74

  Lesson 75

  Lesson 76

  Lesson 77

  3

  Lesson 78

  Lesson 79

  Lesson 80

  Lesson 81

  Lesson 82

  Lesson 83

  Lesson 84

  Lesson 85

  Lesson 86

  Lesson 87

  Lesson 88

  Lesson 89

  Lesson 90

  Lesson 91

  Lesson 92

  Lesson 93

  Lesson 94

  Lesson 95

  Lesson 96

  Lesson 97

  Lesson 98

  Lesson 99

  Lesson 100

  Lesson 101

  Lesson 102

  Lesson 103

  Lesson 104

  Lesson 105

  Lesson 106

  Lesson 107

  Lesson 108

  Lesson 109

  Lesson 110

  Lesson 111

  Lesson 112

  Lesson 113

  Lesson 114

  Lesson 115

  Lesson 116

  Lesson 117

  Lesson 118

  Lesson 119

  Lesson 120

  Lesson 121

  Lesson 122

  Lesson 123

  Lesson 124

  Lesson 125

  Lesson 126

  Lesson 127

  Lesson 128

  Lesson 129

  Lesson 130

  Lesson 131

  Lesson 132

  Lesson 133

  Lesson 134

  Lesson 135

  Lesson 136

  Lesson 137

  Lesson 138, the last

  An excerpt from WITH MY BODY

  Cover

  Lesson 28

  Lesson 29

  Lesson 30

  Lesson 31

  Lesson 32

  Lesson 33

  Lesson 34

  Lesson 35

  Lesson 36

  Lesson 37

  Lesson 38

  Postscript

  Praise for The Bride Stripped Bare

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Dear Sir,

  I am taking the liberty of sending you this manuscript, which I am hoping may interest you.

  It was written by my daughter. Twelve months ago, she vanished. Her car was found at the top of a cliff in the south of England, yet her body was never recovered. Despite extensive questioning of several people close to her, the police concluded it was a case of suicide and closed their file. Others speculate that she may have staged her own disappearance. I’m not sure about either scenario and the uncertainty of it all, I must admit has consumed my life.

  She was completing a book at the time of her disappearance. It was in her laptop, which the police returned to me. I’m the only person, as far as I know, whom she told about what she’d been working on. It’s about a married woman’s secret life, and my daughter wished to remain anonymous because she wanted to write with complete candor; she feared she’d only end up censoring herself if her name was attached. She also wanted to protect the people around her, and herself.

  I read through her manuscript in the hope of finding a reason for her vanishing, and I felt her life open up before me like a flower. How much I didn’t know. How much I didn’t want to know. She was a stranger to me in many ways and yet the person closest to me.

  My first instinct, I must admit, was to just delete her book and forget about it, but it’s been a long time since her going, and even though I’ve never stopped hoping it will be her on the end of the line when the phone rings, I feel now, that I owe it to help her if I can and find a publisher for her work. I believe it’s what she wanted, very much. Her happiness is, ultimately, all I ever wanted for her.

  So, here is The Bride Stripped Bare. Thank you for your time.

  1

  I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s somebody nobody knows about.

  —ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THORNTON WILDER,

  Shadow of a Doubt

  Lesson 1

  honesty is of the utmost importance

  Your husband doesn’t know you’re writing this. It’s quite easy to write it under his nose. Just as easy, perhaps, as sleeping with other people. But no one will ever know who you are, or what you’ve done, for you’ve always been seen as the good wife.

  Lesson 2

  cold water stimulates, strengthens and braces the nerves

  A honeymoon. A foreign land.

  There you are, succumbing to the sexual ritual and remembering the day as a seven-year-old when you discovered water. You’d never been in a swimming pool before; there were none where you were growing up. You’re remembering a summer holiday and a swimming pool with the water inching up your belly as you stepped forward gingerly and the slow creep of the cold and the breath collected in the knot of your stomach and your mother always there ahead of you, smiling and coaxing and holding out her hands and stepping back and back. Then suddenly, pop, you’re floating and the water’s holding your belly and legs like sinews of rope, it’s muscular and balming and silky and the memory’s as potent as a first kiss.

  As for the first time you fucked, well, you remember the sound, as his fingers readied you between your legs, not much else. Not even a name now.

  Lesson 3

  making a comfortable bed is a very important p
art of household work

  In the night air of Marrakech, on your belated honeymoon, the first scrum of morning birds sounds like fat spitting and crackling in a kitchen. It’s still dark but the birds have taken over from the frogs as crisply as if a conductor’s lowered his baton. The call to prayer has pulled you awake and you can’t fall back into sleep, you want to fling the french doors wide, as wide as they’ll go, and inhale the strange desert dawn. But your husband, Cole, will wake and complain if you do.

  So. You lay your hand on the jut of his hip and breathe in his sleeping, the sour, sweet smell of it, and smile softly in the dark. The tip of your nose nuzzles his scent on the back of his neck.

  You’ve never loved anyone more in your life.

  You slip on to the balcony. It’s hot, 82 degrees at least. A wondrous child-smile greets a great spill of stars, for the vast orange glow from London’s lights means you never see stars at home, scarcely know when there’s a full moon. The night flowers exhale their bloom, bougainvillaea and hibiscus and magnolia are still and shadowy in the night. You feel fat with content. Cole calls out, plaintive, and you slip back inside and his arm wings your body and clamps you tight.

  Your feet maneuver free of the sheet’s smother and dangle off the edge of the bed, as they always do, finding the coolness and the air.

  Lesson 4

  very few people have many friends; as the word is generally used, it has no meaning at all

  On the day before you leave for Marrakech Mrs. Theodora White tells you she has no passion in her life, for anything. It’s such a shock to hear, but she dismisses your concern with a smile and a flick of her hand. She picks a sliver of tobacco off her tongue and throws back her head to gulp the last of her flat white wine. She was born thirty-five whereas you haven’t gained definition yet, haven’t hardened into adulthood. You’re also in your thirties but still stamp through puddles and sing off-key too much, as if tucked inside you is a little girl who refuses to die.

  The only thing I’ve ever had a passion for was Jesus, Theo tells you. When I was eleven. It was something to do with the hips.

  She was expelled from your convent school because the Mother Superior decided she had more influence over the students than the nuns did. She has many stories like this. You do not. She’s called Diz by the people closest to her. She’s always rolling her cigarettes from a battered silver case and this only adds to her charm, as does her air of being constantly in heat. Your friend is lush, ripe, her body a peachy size fourteen. She’s one of those women who look like they enjoy an abundance of everything, food, fresh air, sex, laughter, love. When alongside Theo you feel pale, like a leaf left too long in the water, bleached of color and life.

  But you don’t envy her for you know too much about her. She’s your oldest friend in the world, you’ve loved her since you were thirteen. You’re not sure why it’s so disturbing to hear she has no passion in her; perhaps it’s because your life, in contrast, on the cusp of your honeymoon, seems bathed in love. As you walk home from the café you smile out loud at that thought, you can’t help it, you smile widely as you walk down the street.

  Lesson 5

  it is absolutely necessary to wash the

  armpits and hips every day

  You’ve laughed with Theo that your husband always sleeps with his T-shirt and boxer shorts on, even when it’s hot. That he doesn’t appreciate the sweetness of skin to skin, the softness of it and the smell, the warmth. Just the sight of a man’s chest can make you wet. You’d never say an expression like that to him, makes me wet. You would to Theo. Cole would be horrified at how much she knows.

  You love placing your palm on Cole’s chest when you’re lying in bed, curving your torso around the crescent of his back, the jigsaw fit of it. You love the smell of him when he hasn’t washed, especially the softness under his arms. If he knew, he’d describe it as unseemly. Sometimes in bed Cole doesn’t allow your hand to stay on his chest, he brusques it away. Sometimes he lets your hand rest there. Sometimes he clamps your hand like it’s caught in a trap and when you drag it away he clutches it tight and it becomes a game to disentangle yourself.

  But only you’re giggling, in the close dark.

  Lesson 6

  girls can never be too thoughtful

  Why are you putting on your socks, you ask.

  Because I’m going back to the room, Lovely.

  But we’ve just got here, Donkey. Your swimmers are still wet.

  I know, but there’s a very important meeting in front of the telly. Are you coming?

  No, I’ll stay a bit longer.

  You feel guilty saying no for Cole needs you a lot and he’s loud with his want, it’s almost a petulance, like a boy’s. But you can feel your skin absorbing this hard Moroccan light like the desert does rain, can feel it uncurling something within you. Here the light bashes you; in England, it licks you. Cole’s skin and eyes recoil from it; his skin is very pale, almost translucent; he’s away, inside, a lot. Not only on holidays but in London too. He sequesters himself by habit. At work, until late, or in front of the television, or in the bathroom. He can stay on the toilet for three-quarters of an hour or more, if you sit next to him on the couch he’ll make his way to the armchair without even realizing what he’s doing, if you put your hand on his groin in bed he’ll shrug it away. He sleeps with the curve of his back to you more often than not.

  Yet even when he’s away he needs you nearby: he’s told you that you’re his life. You love the ferocity in his need, to be wanted so much. Cole is the only man you’re attracted to whom you can talk to without a fear of silence, like an empty highway, right through the middle of the conversation. Or of saying something ridiculous and telling, or of your lip trembling, or of blushing. Your body stays obedient around Cole, you’re in control, you can relax. It’s one of the reasons why you married him. That you’re comfortable with him, that you don’t have to act too much, you can be, almost, yourself. No one else is allowed so close.

  Lesson 7

  dance away with all your might

  Your big toe’s kissed, indulgently, when you throw back your arms like a diva on the sunlounger and declare you’ll be staying by the pool a little longer. Neither Cole nor yourself has seen anything, yet, of the new city you’re in, even though you’ve been here for four days. Theo would berate you for this but marriage has made you soft, dulled your curiosity. The crush of robed and veiled people at the airport, the mountains of luggage and squealing children and machine-guns on guards were all a little overwhelming, so both Cole and yourself are content to stay wrapped within the hotel for a while. It’s like the one in the movie The Shining, with wide, deco corridors and a surreally spare lobby and the regret of some long-ago lost decadence. A bastion of French colonialism that’s now frequented by wealthy Europeans, but there are not enough of them to plump out its space. There are no Muslims. Perhaps they find it too ridiculous, or unwelcoming, or odd, but there’s no one to ask.

  You would’ve sought the answers once, you shone with curiosity once. Now you’re almost too languid to care, for you’re distracted, deliciously so. You sit on the edge of the pool and dawdle your fingertips in its coolness and remember something from the day-old Times, that the urge to think rarely strikes the contented. You smile—so what?—and wave over a pool waiter for another Bellini. How you love them. You’ve never allowed yourself the luxury of laziness, or four Bellinis in a row before.

  A donkey pulls a cart of clippings up a rose-bowered path of the hotel’s gardens. A man flicks a whip lazily over the animal’s back. It’s something of this land at least. You must photograph it.

  Lesson 8

  it is a wife’s duty to make her husband’s home happy

  Midnight is thick with heat and humming with stillness before the assault of the frogs and the birds and your eyes are shut but you can sense Cole’s gaze, can feel his greed and there’s a tightness in your throat. Your relationship works delightfully, easily, in so many ways, except
for the sex.