Mrs. Lucia Cheung had been married for twenty-two years before it actually dawned upon her that she despised her husband. Despised him for being the boring, colourless, ordinary little man that he was. Each morning as he put on his neat, grey raincoat, took his umbrella from the hallstand, and said, always in that very same tone, 'I'll be off now, dear', the thin lines of bitterness about Lucia's pursed lips would deepen just a little more. She would watch him, through her spotless front window, as he walked down the path, across their neatly barbered lawn with its border of respectale roses, until he had disappeared out of sight up the street. Something about his cheery, scuttling gait, never failed to fill her with distaste. She would turn and look with vague dissatisfaction at her smug, middle-class dining-room, with its over-stuffed floral sofa; and the shining teak dining table that she had so religiously polished, with only the purest bees wax, each Tuesday morning for the past twenty years. The beige rug was spotless, and that tired trio of china geese flew neatly across the mauve walls, just as they were doing on countless other walls across suburbia.

Lucia spent her days cleaning and dreaming. She dreamt of romance, of passionate encounters with a variety of handsome men, men who leapt so forcefully from the pages of the romantic fiction she read. As she went busily about her daily chores, as she scrubbed and scoured till every surface shone, till every shelf, every corner was sterilized and spotless, in the secret places of her mind, she would be swooning in the arms of some long-legged, head-muscled rogue, who never wore a grey raincoat. She beat the rugs with the relentless fury of her frustration, and she waxed and rubbed the woodwork with a tenderness overspilling from her romantic dreams. If ever a cockroach or silverfish was so brace as to venture into such sterility, Lucia would pounce upon it with a peculiar relish, for the hurried, scuttling movements of such creatures reminded her strangely of her husband.

The only room in all the house to remain relatively immune to Lucia's hygienic onslaughts was her husband's little study. Here he would read in the evenings, or pursue his long-standing hobby of oil painting. Lucia's restraint in entering his sanctuary was due more to her distaste at the sight of his artistic endeavours, rather than to any respect for his privacy. To her, the dozens of small still-lifes, all so drab and so very similar, seemed somehow to painfully symbolise the boredom and sterility of their married life. Endless bowls of roses, each flower painted in exactly the same way, with those tiny, precise brushstrokes. The colours were lifeless and muddy, and the finished works, grouped so proudly about the walls, filled her with bitter futility. Occasionally, she would enter the room and half-heartedly move some of his books about, or rearrange his bottles of turpentine and oils; but her husband's presence, so drearily evoked by so many of his possessions, always seemed to interfere witth the romantic imagery of her fantasy world, and she would soon leave.

But one particular morning, just as she was about to leave, Lucia caught sight of a large, black cockroach, as it was scuttling beneath an old wardrobe that stood in the corner of his room. Clasping her can of insecticide spray, she got down on her knees and peered beneath the wardrobe, which was an old-fashioned kind with short legs, and a sizeable space underneath. Lucia was surprised to find that her view was obscured by what appeared to be a bundle of canvas sheets, the kind her husband used for his paintings. Puzzling over why they should be pushed out of sight in this way, she dragged the heavy pile out, and sat up to look at them. Her puzzlement turned to a stunned disbelief as she rifled through the bundle of paintings. They were all nudes! Dozens of them! Naked women in a variety of quite abandoned, voluptuous poses. Lucia looked and felt her cheeks grow warm, as she realised that each of them bore a face that was unmistakably hers! Her features were crude, cast in thick, savage brushstrokes - but the eyebrows, the hair, she knew they were her. But those bodies! She spread them out before her across the floor, and still clutching her spray can, she sat and stared at them. The colours were raw and basic, deep, lurid pinks and over-ripe flesh tones, and the brushstrokes were slashes, quite savage, almost brutal. Lucia, her face still suffused with colour, looked up at the precise, dry little things around the walls, then down again. She was unable to quite believe that thse violent creations, so passionately alive, so blatantly sexual, could have sprung from the same brush, the same man. The faces, all so like hers, were yet so very different. The wardrobe door had a long mirror on itt, and she opened it slightly so she could see her reflection. Then she looked again at the paintings, spread out before her like some wild, orgiastic comic strip. The mouths were pouting and sensual, and seemed a cruel mockery of her own then, impatient lips. The painted eyes were heavy-lidded and languorous, and the hair, wild and tangled, although of the same colou, bore no relation to her own carefully arranged, imprisoned curls.

Lucia sat for a long time looking into the mirror. She noted the claw marks of bittnerness about her mouth, and the prim, starched collar of her blouse. She thought about all of her dreams and frustractions. She thought about her husband. She suddenly became aware of the spra she was holding, and she looked from it to the paintings. The tight little smile that twisted her lips then, was sadly ironical.

Most of the afternoon had gone before Lucia moved. Her legs were almost paralysed from sitting for so long. Before climbing to her feet, she carefully placed the pictres back into their places beneath the wardrobe. She looked at herself once more in the mirror and smiled a little. Her husband would soon be home expecting his dinner. But she didn’t go into the kitchen and put on her apron. Instead she went to the bedroom, to slip into something a little more comfortable!