Twenty-three

It was the middle of March, nearly the beginning of British Summer Time again. There were crocuses and daffodils in all the parks, brighter faces on the street; the sun rose higher each day. Joanna Noble was right. I would never know what happened in the past. Everyone has their secrets and their betrayals. No one’s life is untouched by shame. Best keep dark things in the dark, where they can heal and fade. Best put away the torments of jealousy and paranoid curiosity.
I knew that Adam and I could not spend the rest of our lives together by shutting out the world and exploring each other’s bodies in strange, darkened rooms. We had to let the world in a bit. All the friends we had ignored, relatives we had abandoned, duties we had put aside, movies we hadn’t seen, papers we had failed to read. We had to act a bit more like normal people. So I went out and bought some new clothes. I went to the supermarket and bought ordinary kinds of food: eggs, cheese, flour, things like that. I made arrangements, as I had in my previous life.
‘I’m going to a film with Pauline tomorrow,’ I said to Adam, when he came in.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Why?’
‘I need to see some friends. And I thought we could invite people round for a meal here on Saturday.’
He looked at me inquiringly.
‘I thought I’d ask Sylvie and Clive,’ I persevered. ‘And what about having Klaus here, or Daniel, and maybe Deborah? Or whoever you want.’
‘Sylvie and Clive and Klaus and Daniel and Deborah? Here?’
‘Is that strange?’
He took my hand and fiddled with the wedding ring. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Doing what?’
‘You know.’
‘It can’t all be…’ I struggled for a word. ‘Intensity. We need ordinary life.’
‘Why?’
‘Don’t you ever want just to sit in front of the TV? Or go to bed early with a book?’ The memory of my last weekend with Jake suddenly came flooding in on me: all that unremarkable domestic happiness that I had so euphorically thrown off. ‘Or fly a kite or go tenpin bowling?’
‘Bowling? What the fuck is this?’
‘You know what I mean.’
He was silent. I put my arms around him and hugged him, but he felt resistant. ‘Adam, you’re my dearest love. I’m in this for life. But marriage is about ordinary things, chores, boring duties, work, squabbles, sorting out squabbles. Everything. Not just, well, burning desire.’
‘Why?’ Adam said simply. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. ‘Who says?’
I stopped hugging him and went and sat on the armchair. I didn’t know if I felt angry or forlorn, if I should shout or weep.
‘I want to have children one day, Adam, or maybe I do. I want to get a house sometime and be middle-aged and ordinary. I want to be with you when I’m old.’
He crossed the room and knelt at my feet and put his face in my lap. I stroked his tangled hair, smelt the sweat of his day on him. ‘You’ll always be with me,’ he said, his voice muffled.

Pauline’s pregnancy was beginning to show, and her face, normally so pale and severe, looked plump and rosy. Her dark hair, which she usually tied back, fell on to her shoulders. She looked young and pretty and happy. We were shy with each other, courteous and making an effort. I tried to remember what we used to talk about when we saw each other back in the pre-Adam days: everything and nothing, I suppose; casual bits of gossip, hushed confidences, intimate inanities which were like verbal acts of affection. We used to giggle. Be silent. Argue and make up. This evening, however, we had to work hard to keep our conversation from flagging, and whenever there was a pause one of us would rush to fill it.
After the film we went to a pub. She had tomato juice and I had gin. When I pulled a note out of my wallet to pay for the drinks, the photograph that Adam had taken of me the day he had asked me to marry him fell out too.
‘That’s a strange picture,’ she said, picking it up. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
I stuffed it back between the credit cards and the driving licence. I didn’t want anyone else peering at it – it was for my eyes only.
We discussed the bad film rather tamely, until suddenly I couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘How’s Jake?’ I asked, as I always did.
‘All right,’ she said blankly.
‘No, I really mean how is he. I want to know.’
Pauline looked at me shrewdly. I didn’t look away, or smile meaninglessly, and when she spoke it felt like a kind of victory for something. ‘The plan was that you two were going to get married, have children. Then it all changed. He told me that everything was going well and that it came out of the blue. Is that true?’
I nodded. ‘Pretty much.’
‘He’s shaken. He was so wrong about you.’ I didn’t speak. ‘He was, wasn’t he? Did you love him?’
I thought back to the distant days of me and Jake. I could hardly remember what his face looked like any more. ‘Of course I did. And there was you, and the Crew, Clive and Sylvie and the rest, like a big family. I think I thought the same as Jake. I felt I was betraying all of you. I still think that. It’s as if I’ve become an outsider.’
‘That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Being an outsider. Choosing the heroic loner and giving everything up for him. Great fantasy.’ Her voice was flat and faintly contemptuous.
‘That’s not what I want.’
‘Has anyone told you that you look completely different from three months ago?’
‘No, they haven’t.’
‘Well, you do.’
‘How?’
Pauline looked at me reflectively with an almost hard expression. Was she hitting back at me?
‘You look thinner,’ she said. ‘Tired. You’re not as tidy as you used to be. You always wore neat clothes and your hair was well cut and everything about you seemed ordered and composed. Now’ – she stared at me, and I was uncomfortably aware of the bruise on my neck – ‘you look a bit, well, wasted. 111.’
‘I’m not composed,’ I said, truculently. ‘I don’t think I ever was. But you, on the other hand, look wonderful.’
Pauline smiled a smile of contained satisfaction. ‘It’s the pregnancy,’ she purred. ‘You should try it sometime.’

When I got back from the film Adam was not in. At about midnight, I gave up waiting for him and climbed into bed. I stayed awake until one, reading, listening for his feet pounding up the stairs. Then I slept fitfully, waking every so often to look at the luminous hands on the alarm clock. He didn’t come home until three. I heard him throw off his clothes and shower himself. I wasn’t going to ask him where he’d been. He climbed into bed and spooned himself behind me, warm and clean, smelling of soap. He put his hands on my breasts and kissed my neck. Why do people shower at three in the morning?
‘Where’ve you been?’ I said.
‘Letting air into our relationship, of course.’

I cancelled the meal. I bought all the food and the drink, but then I couldn’t go through with it after all. I came in with the shopping that Saturday morning; Adam was in the kitchen drinking a beer. He jumped up and helped me unpack everything. He took my coat off and rubbed my fingers, which were cramped from carrying the bags back from the supermarket. He made me sit down while he put the ready-roasted chicken and the different cheeses in the small fridge. He made a pot of tea for me and eased my shoes off, rubbed my feet. He put his arms around me as if he worshipped me and kissed my hair, and said, ever so softly, ‘Did you go out of London the week before last, Alice?’
‘No, why?’ I was too startled to think clearly. My heart was banging uncomfortably, and I was sure he must be able to feel it through my cotton shirt.
‘Not at all?’ He kissed the side of my jaw.
‘I worked all of last week, you know that.’
He had found something out. My brain worked furiously.
‘Of course I do.’ His hands slid down and cupped my buttocks. He held me very tightly, kissed me again.
‘I went to a meeting in Maida Vale one day, but that’s all.’
‘What day would that be?’
‘I can’t think.’ Maybe he’d phoned the office that day, maybe that’s what had happened. But why ask me now? ‘Wednesday, I think it was. Yes.’
‘Wednesday. That’s a coincidence.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your skin feels all silky today.’ He kissed my eyelids, then started very slowly to undo the buttons on my shirt. I stood quite still as he took the shirt off. What had he found out? He undid my bra and took that off as well.
‘Careful, Adam, the curtains are open. Someone could see us.’
‘That doesn’t matter. Take off my shirt. That’s it. Now my belt. Take my belt out of my jeans.’
I did.
‘Now feel in my pocket. Go on, Alice. No, not that pocket, the other one.’
‘There’s nothing there.’
‘Yes, there is. It’s only small, though.’
My fingers felt a stiff piece of paper. I drew it out.
‘There you are, Alice. A train ticket.’
‘Yes.’
‘For last Wednesday.’
‘Yes. So?’ Where had he found that? I must have left it in my coat or bag or something.
‘The day you were out of the office in – where did you say?’
‘Maida Vale.’
‘Yes, Maida Vale.’ He started to undo my jeans. ‘Though the train ticket is for Gloucester.’
‘What is this about, Adam?’
‘You tell me.’
‘What has a train ticket got to do with anything?’
‘There. Step out of your jeans. It was in your coat pocket.’
‘What were you doing going through my coat pocket?’
‘What were you doing, Alice, going to Gloucester?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Adam, I never went to Gloucester.’ It never occurred to me to tell him the truth. At least I still had a trace of self-preservation left.
‘Take your knickers off.’
‘No. Stop this.’
‘Why Gloucester, I wonder?’
‘I never went there, Adam. Mike went there a few days ago – maybe it was Wednesday – to visit some warehouse space. Maybe it’s his ticket. But why does it matter?’
‘Why was it in your pocket, then?’
‘Fuck knows. Look, if you don’t believe me, ring him up and ask him. Go on. I’ll dictate the number to you.’
I glared at him defiantly. I knew Mike was away for the weekend anyway.
‘We’ll forget about Mike and Gloucester, then, shall we?’
‘I’d already forgotten it,’ I said.
He pushed me to the floor and knelt over me. He looked as if he were about to cry and I held my arms out to him. When he struck me with his belt, the buckle biting into my flesh, it didn’t even hurt very much. Nor the second time. Was this the spiral my GP had warned me of?
‘I love you so very much, Alice,’ he groaned, afterwards.

‘You’ve no idea how very much I love you. Don’t ever let me down. I wouldn’t be able to bear it.’
I put off the meal, saying to everyone I called that I had flu. It was true that I felt so exhausted it was like being ill. We ate the chicken I had bought in bed and went to sleep early, locked in each other’s arms.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29