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Twenty-two

‘You did what?’
Until then I had always thought that the expression about jaws dropping was a metaphor or a poetic exaggeration but there was no doubt about it: Joanna Noble’s jaw dropped.
On the train back, already shocked and distressed, I had suffered a virtual panic attack as it occurred to me for the first time what I had actually done. I imagined Michelle ringing the Participant and asking to speak to Sylvie Bushnell in order to complain or add something to her story, and discovering there was no one of that name, and then talking to Joanna instead. The trail to me was hardly long and winding. What would Michelle feel about what had been done to her? A further, and not entirely irrelevant, question was what would happen to me. Even if I hadn’t exactly broken the law, I imagined myself explaining to Adam what I had done.
I settled the matter, to the extent that it was possible, immediately. I phoned Joanna Noble from a call-box on the way home and was at her flat over in Tufnell Park at breakfast-time the next day.
I looked at Joanna. ‘Your ash needs tapping,’ I said.
‘What?’ she asked, still stupefied.
I found a saucer on the table and dangled it under the teetering cylinder of ash at the end of the cigarette in her right hand. I tapped the cigarette myself and the ash snowed down on to the saucer. I braced myself to amplify the stark sentence of confession I had just spoken. I had to be as clear as I could possibly be.
‘I feel very ashamed, Joanna. Let me tell you exactly what I did and then you can tell me what you think of me. I rang up Michelle Stowe and I pretended to be a colleague of yours working on the newspaper. I went and talked to her and she told me about what happened between her and Adam. I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to find out and I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. But it was wrong. I feel terrible.’
Joanna stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. She ran her fingers through her hair. She was still in her dressing-gown. ‘What the fuck did you think you were doing?’
‘Investigating.’
‘She thought she was talking to a reporter. She thought she was making a brave declaration on behalf of rape victims and instead she was satisfying your nosiness about what your hubby’ – this last uttered with bitter contempt – ‘got up to with his little cock before you were married.’
‘I’m not trying to defend myself.’
Joanna took a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘You gave her a false name?’
‘I told her my name was Sylvie Bushnell.’
‘Sylvie Bushnell? Where did you get that from? You…’ But then it was all too much for her. Joanna started giggling, then laughed uncontrollably. She put her head down on the table and banged her forehead lightly twice. She took another drag and started coughing and laughing at the same time. Finally she controlled herself. ‘You’ve certainly got a taste for the jugular. You should be doing my job. I need some coffee. You want some?’
I nodded and she boiled some water and spooned the ground beans into a cafetière as we talked.
‘So what did she tell you?’
I gave a summary of what Michelle had said.
‘Hmm,’ said Joanna. She didn’t seem especially disconcerted. She poured two mugs of coffee and sat back down opposite me at her kitchen table. ‘So what do you feel after your escapade?’
I took a sip of coffee. ‘I’m still trying to sort it out in my mind. Rocked. That’s one of the things I feel.’
Joanna looked sceptical. ‘Really?’
‘Of course.’
She lit another cigarette. ‘Is it any different from what you read in the paper? Based on what you told me, I would still acquit Adam. I’m amazed it ever came to court.’
‘I don’t care about the legal technicalities, Joanna. All I care is what happened. What may have happened.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Alice, we’re grown-ups.’ She topped up her coffee. ‘Look, I don’t think of myself as an especially promiscuous person. Well, nobody does, do they? But I’ve had sex with men to make them go away, or because they went on and on about it. I’ve had sex with people while drunk who I wouldn’t have had sex with sober. I’ve done it not really wanting to, and I’ve regretted it the next morning, or ten minutes later. Once or twice I’ve humiliated myself so that I felt sick with it. Haven’t you?’
‘On occasion.’
‘All I’m saying is that most of us have gone out into that grey area and played around with what we really want to do. I mean, it’s difficult, but all I’m saying is that it’s not like the man who climbs through your window with a mask and a knife.’
‘I’m sorry, Joanna, I’m not comfortable with that.’
‘You’re not supposed to be comfortable with it. That’s the point. Look, I don’t know about you and Adam. How did you meet?’
‘Well, let’s just say it wasn’t exactly having tea with the vicar and all very Jane Austen.’
‘Quite. When I met Adam he was rude to me, prickly, difficult. I suspect his attitude to me was a combination of being uninterested, suspicious and contemptuous and I felt turned on by him. The man is sexy, right?’ There was a silence I made no attempt to fill.
‘Well, he is, isn’t he?’
‘He’s my husband,’ I said primly.
‘For Christ’s sake, Alice, don’t play Pollyanna with me. The man is an epic in himself. He single-handedly saved the lives of almost everybody in that expedition. Klaus was telling me about his life. He walked out of Eton when he was sixteen and made his way to the Alps. He bummed around there for a couple of years before finding his way out to the Himalayas where he spent years trekking and climbing. How dare you find this man before me?’
‘I know all this, Joanna. It’s a shock finding this other side to him.’
‘What other side?’
‘That he can be violent, dangerous.’
‘Has he been violent to you?’
‘Well… you know.’ I gave a shrug.
‘Oh, you mean in nice ways.’
‘I don’t know if nice is the right word.’
‘Mm,’ said Joanna approvingly, almost carnivorously. ‘You have got a problem, Alice.’
‘Have I?’
‘You’ve fallen in love with a hero, an extraordinary man who’s not like anybody I’ve ever heard of. He’s strange and unpredictable and I think that sometimes you wish he was like a solicitor coming home at six thirty for dinner and a cuddle and the missionary position once a week. What was your last relationship?’
‘I left somebody for Adam.’
‘What was he like?’
‘He was nice. But not like that solicitor you’re talking about. He was good fun, considerate, we were friends, shared the same interests, we had a good time together. Sex was good.’
Joanna leaned across the table and looked at me closely. ‘Miss him?’
‘It’s all so different with Adam. We don’t "do things together", the way I used to with other boyfriends. We’re never just casually, easily, together, the way I was with Jake. It’s all so… so intense, so tiring in a way. And sex – well, sure it’s great, but it’s also disturbing. Troubling. I don’t know the rules any more.’

‘Do you miss Jake?’ Joanna asked again.
It was a question I had never asked myself. I had virtually never had time to ask myself.
‘Not for a single second,’ I heard myself say.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29