I pulled off the road and lit a cigarette.
It was a warm summer evening and I'd taken a drive to escape the house. Not that I missed Sarah, I was better off without the slut, but her presence still contaminated the rooms. Memories of her cheap scent seemed to linger, the smell exuding from the walls like rising damp. I couldn't look at the dressing table without remembering the bottles of her highly coloured nail varnish and lipstick, all neatly set out within easy reach. Even the bedroom carpet was defiled with the memory of her face, her mouth open wide and full of another man's cock.
I'll never forget her words that afternoon. It was as if I was to blame for coming home unexpectedly early.
"What are you doing here?"
His cock was still wet from pre-cum and her saliva. It was bobbing hard and erect in the air next to her face, reflecting in her deep brown eyes. I didn't look at the man's face, not at first. I was frozen, staring at the grotesque tableau in revulsion. He was sitting in a chair, leant back with his legs wide apart, with Sarah crouched supplicant before his naked body.
I dragged her upright by her hair, clasping her blonde curls tightly around my fingers, and threw her out. She was screaming, alternating between begging for forgiveness and shouting abuse as I pushed her out of the door. Her lover was struggling to dress, trying to pull on his trousers and grab his shirt as he ran down the stairs. I slammed the front door behind them and turned the key, leaving it in the lock so she couldn't use her key to open it from outside.
I didn't see her again. She came back to the house the following day when I was at work and took her clothes and a few personal possessions, and about a week later telephoned me to say she was staying at her mother's. She didn't contest the divorce. I owned the house before our marriage, and we had always maintained separate bank accounts, so the formalities were quickly dispensed. As far as I know she may have moved in with her lover after that, but I didn't care. She was the past.
Maybe I should have sold up and moved somewhere else, but that would have been like giving her some sort of moral victory, and continuing to live there became a matter of principle for me. I redecorated, got a new bed, and changed the curtains. I burned the chair on a bonfire in the garden, adding a few photograph albums to the blazing pyre on the lawn. I would have burned the carpet too, but it had come from my parent's house after they'd died, and it reminded me of them. I needed to cling to something in those dark, post-marriage days.
And that's when I started walking in the woods. My ex-wife was a townie, preferring to relax in the city cafes rather than savouring the trees and rolling fields of the outlying countryside. The only walk I took during our marriage was from the front door to the car. After the divorce, I started to visit the countryside, walking for hours through the local woods and seeking consolation in the gnarled trunks of the ancient beech and oaks that characterised the Chiltern Hills. The scenery was lovely, even on dark and wet November afternoons when the city seemed vacuously drab.
Slowly the days lengthened and the weather improved. Sometimes I drove to the woods direct from work, spending the evening listening to the birds singing in the canopy above my head. It became my recluse, away from the dirt and memories of ten years of matrimony. But I think now, looking back, I was trying to escape from something more than the dissolution of my marriage.
I was seeking to suppress the temptation to get revenge on womankind.
The anger I felt towards my wife grew with the passing seasons, spreading out to encompass every woman I encountered. I watched them in the streets, flaunting their bodies in the sunshine, teasing me with their pert breasts and long, tanned legs. I couldn't even escape at work, both disgusted and aroused by the young secretaries in their smart mini-skirted business suits and short summer dresses. It was only by walking in the woods, smelling the new foliage after rain, that I could relax and forget my growing desire for sexual revenge.
And, in the end, the woods did provide me with catharsis. Although I doubt Maria saw it that way.
Everybody in the office knew Maria. She was Mexican and, although only Malcolm’s secretary, newcomers thought she was in charge of the building. She strode around, normally carrying a bundle of important looking files, giving orders on behalf of her boss in an uncompromising, dictatorial manner. She drove an expensive car and dressed in designer clothes way beyond her meager salary, paid for by virtue of having married an extremely powerful and influential City banker. Maybe mixing with his colleagues had helped hone that superior air that made her so despised by everybody in the department, but whatever the reason she presided over her colleagues with an effortless superiority that was legendary. Nobody, but nobody, ever tried to contradict or coerce Maria.
She seemed to gain particular pleasure from treating men, and me in particular, with contempt. She always wore intimidating, well-cut suits, usually with short skirts that accentuated her slender hips and long, shapely legs. She was attractive and she knew it, wearing clothes that flattered her lithe body. She knew how to use her sultry physique to assert her power, sitting back in her chair and putting her hands on her knees in a pose of assured, aggressive femininity. Whenever I dared venture to the third floor she was on guard, seldom permitting me entry to Malcolm’s inner office except by express invitation. She sat behind her desk, looking at me with her accustomed supercilious expression, fully aware that I was no match for her withering look.
"Malcolm’s very busy and can’t see you today. I’ll try and speak to him. He may be able to fit you in tomorrow, or maybe the day after."
Then she would turn away, resolutely tapping her computer keyboard and making it clear our conversation was concluded. I retreated accordingly, sneaking a glance at her legs before closing the door on my way out.
That fateful morning our paths had crossed in the office canteen. She was talking in a loud voice to one of the secretaries.
"Of course, I won't be here for the next two weeks. My husband and I are jetting off home. We're spending a few days with my brother in Guadalajara before spending the rest of the time on the coast. My husband's booked the best hotel in the area, we'll be staying there."
The other woman looked suitably impressed.
"I haven't been home in such a long time. We've been everywhere else; the Far East, safari in Africa, we've done all those things, but it'll be nice to go home and see how the place has changed."
Maria cast a disparaging glance around the room.
"I don’t know how Malcolm will cope while I'm away, but he'll just have to manage. I suppose everything will be a complete mess when I get back. That's the only trouble with holidays, having to come back to such a tangle. Still, I suppose people do their best."
Several people in the canteen exchanged glances. As I say, everybody knew Maria.
I collected my food and sat quietly at a corner table. I listened to Maria relating stories of a recent safari to her colleague, casting glances over towards her table with ill-concealed hatred. She typified everything I’d come to hate about women. That false authoritarianism, using physical attributes to intimidate and control men like me. How I dreamed of using that same sexuality against her! She was nothing but a cheap whore, extorting power, not money, from the men around her. I was convinced the only reason Malcolm had appointed her was because she’d slept with him.
At one point, her fork poised at her lips, she glanced in my direction. Maybe she could see the growing anger in my face because she looked quickly away before continuing her reminiscences in an even louder voice. I couldn’t stand it any more and I walked out in disgust, throwing my cutlery in the dirty bin with a clatter.
I spent that afternoon unsuccessfully trying to balance the departmental accounts, and left early and frustrated. It was hot in the car and I drove with the passenger window wide open, trying to extract every bit of the barely discernible breeze. When I reached the woods I took the longest path, feeling calmer in the cool shadows of the trees. I sat down on a rotting stump to swig from a can of fizzy drink and contemplate the sky through the canopy, putting my face back to catch the dappled sunlight shimmering through the canopy.
It's a beautiful part of the country, I mused contentedly, my eyes closed and listening to a pigeon gently cooing on a far branch. Home, work, the city - they all seemed so far away.
I walked for hours that evening, climbing over styles and following unfamiliar dirt tracks through the trees. I was truly at peace with myself and with nature. Life, I decided, didn't get any better than this, and it was late when I eventually turned back towards the road.
The path back through the woods took me alongside some fields, and as I looked towards the city in the distance something caught my attention. On the edge of the wood the orange sun was glinting on something shiny, and as I looked closer I could see a car parked at the end of a gated track. The path back to the road circled close to the stationary vehicle, and as I approached I stopped short and gaped at the number plate, recognising it immediately.
In that moment, all the hours of relaxation were lost and I felt my revulsion return as I stared at the car.
Not her. Oh God, not her. How dare the slag come here, to my special place?
Instinctively I jumped back behind a bush and tried to think what to do. If she was in the car she would be sure to see me pass, on the other hand it was a long walk back around the other way of the field to where I was parked. I hesitated, trying to see through the branches of the bush if the car was occupied.
Why her? Why tonight, when I’d only just assuaged my growing anger against her? And why did she want to stop here? I couldn't imagine Maria being interested in the flora and fauna of the Buckinghamshire woodlands?
I must have cowered behind the bush for half an hour before I spotted movement. Then, silently, the back door of the car clicked open and Maria swung her legs out. From my angle I could clearly see her bare thighs as she emerged from the back seat, hastily pulling down her skirt. She looked around nervously, then turned and smiled at another figure crawling out of the car.
It was a young man who definitely wasn't her husband. He was casually dressed and had a flushed, slightly rugged face, and as he emerged into the twilight he grinned as he zipped up his trousers and adjusted his belt. Maria laughed.
I'd never heard her laugh before, nor even seen her smile, and the unfamiliar sound of her giggles seemed totally incongruous with my hitherto image of her. Without thinking, perhaps almost as a reflex action, I pulled out my mobile phone and held it up through the branches. Neither her nor her lover were looking in my direction, both blissfully unaware their every move was now being video recorded on my phone.
Maria helped the man tuck in his shirt, then with a guilty smile she pushed his body back against the car and inclined her head to kiss him. His strong hands felt for the top of her leg, and I watched with growing excitement as he slipped his hand up over her thigh.
"No more," I heard her say softly. "I've got to go. He'll be getting suspicious."
The man looked sad.
"But I won't see you for two weeks," he moaned. "How will I cope?"
"We'll cope," she replied gently. "We always have before."
I stayed behind the bush until they'd driven off, her car lunging over the uneven track. I watched the tail lights disappear into the distance towards to the road, still digesting my observations. Then I clicked my phone to stop recording and played back the video. Maria was immediately recognisable, and as an added bonus I'd managed to film the registration number of her car as she'd driven off.
I put the phone back in my pocket, waiting for a few minutes until I was definitely sure they’d gone. I'd filmed the scene as a whim, with no clear idea what I was going to do with the footage. It was certainly damning, easily enough evidence for her husband to file for divorce. And that was my dilemma. Part of me wanted to mail it to him straight away, ruining her life in the same way women had ruined mine. But the video was dynamite. It had brought me exactly what I’d craved. It gave me power over Maria, and I wanted that more than anything else in the world.
While Maria was away on holiday I copied the video to disk and to my cloud server. I wanted it backed up in several places just in case she got hold of my phone. Then I started planning. I sat in the woods, evening after evening, thinking how I could use the power I'd so accidentally obtained. I could get her to persuade Malcolm to give me a rise. I could ask for money. I could even be altruistic, forcing her to be polite to her colleagues. Or I could do all three. And more.
Most people were dreading Maria returning to work, the atmosphere was so much better when she was away. But for once I wanted her back. I couldn't wait to see her face when she saw the video.
She'd been back several days before I managed to get her alone. We were in the car park at the end of the working day and she was boring a chap from personnel with her holiday stories.
