A Perfect Marriage Page 19

  I stiffen; I have been deceived, he is not offering unconditional acceptance. ‘Just a few affairs I had.’ My voice is muffled, my face still in the fabric of his jersey. ‘Flings or whatever.’

  Although he is stroking my hair gently, he persists in his line of interrogation. ‘“Use them then lose them,” she said.’

  ‘She was trying to be nasty.’

  ‘I know. And she succeeded.’ He lifts my chin with his hand. I look into his eyes; I am close enough to see the white specks in the blue iris, and the darker blue around the edge. ‘Are you going to do that to me?’ he says. ‘Dump me when things start to look serious?’

  Suddenly I feel angry, angrier than I have felt for years apart from in my recent sessions with Helen. I wriggle out of his embrace and back away from him.

  ‘I can’t listen to this,’ I tell him. ‘It’s none of your business. You can just bugger off.’

  ‘Sally, what’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s the last straw! Who cares about a few men I slept with? They weren’t serious and that was reciprocal. Why did you have to mention them? You’ve spoilt everything!’

  ‘I thought we were getting the past into the open.’

  ‘You’re prying. It’s immaterial. They were casual flings. I don’t question you about your past relationships and I never will. Never would have.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve upset you Sally. But surely you can see that this might matter? The past determines the future after all. Initial conditions matter.’ He sounds as if he is giving a lecture to the first year undergraduates; his voice is calm and measured.

  ‘What difference would it make to you?’

  ‘Because I might understand if you’re approaching me in the same fashion. To be used to prop up your ego. And for our relationship not to be developed any further beyond that prop. Sally, I want stability. I’m not sure if you do.’

  I feel as if he has hit me. I know he has a point, and because he has a point I become even more enraged, like a spoilt child unable to handle any criticism. ‘So if I tell you about the men I’ve slept with,’ I shout, ‘you can conclude I’m unwilling to commit. And then we can call the whole thing off, is that what you’re saying? Save you wasting any more time on me, is that it, Anthony?’ An elderly couple passing by arm-in-arm look at me in astonishment, no, it is with disapproval.

  ‘All I’m saying is that if you do think about me as someone you might just have a casual fling with, I want to know. We should talk about it. I know you had a ghastly time in your marriage. How can it not affect you subsequently? Why should you trust men again?’

  ‘So I’m damaged. Damaged goods.’

  ‘No, Sally, love.’ I hear his endearment, and discount it. I throw it away: it’s meaningless, it’s not for me.

  ‘I shouldn’t have brought this up right now,’ he continues, still in his same calm tone. ‘We do need to talk about it, but this is clearly the wrong time. I’m sorry; I’ve been an insensitive bastard.’

  ‘Too late!’ I cry. ‘Too late!’ I want him to become angry so I can walk away. I wait for his reaction, I wait for his fury.

  But he does nothing, and we stand staring at each other, like two boxers in a ring waiting for the right opportunity to make a feint.

  Finally he says: ‘I’m not going to hit you, Sally. I’m never going to hit you. And I’m not going away either.’

  ‘More fool you!’ I cannot really believe that I am behaving in this infantile fashion, but I continue on my chosen course of destruction. ‘I’m off. You can make your own way home!’ I march away. I shall leave Anthony behind; I shall walk out of his life.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he calls out, loudly but apparently calmly.

  I don’t look back but accelerate towards the woods. I have to get some distance between us.

  Chapter 41

  NOW

  It’s almost dark, and it’s cold and damp. Circling through the woods, I scuff up the mouldering leaves with my shoes. I’ve behaved badly and I’ve chosen this route of destruction. I could have ignored Anthony’s question, I could even have responded with a joke, or I could simply have answered truthfully. But I chose to be provoked.

  Anthony picked the wrong time to ask his question. I don’t really know if his motives were noble as he claimed, or if they were based on simple prurience. Or jealousy.

  Yet I could have learned this if I had allowed our relationship to develop. I could have waited to see, I could have given him the benefit of the doubt. Regret begins to drive away my annoyance. I stop walking in order to think more clearly.

  Anthony travelled thousands of miles to see me. He hasn’t raised his voice once to me; he has acted impeccably to me. And how have I responded? Badly. Badly, badly. I have discounted his past too, his loss of Katherine to cancer. His experience has been of bereavement. Like mine, but not like mine; his relationship had been developing but mine was already dead. He had something to look forward to, and something that was abruptly taken away. He has seen the suffering of someone he loved; he has lost someone he loved. He said that he was insensitive but I have been insensitive too. No one reaches forty without being affected by what has happened to them. Initial conditions matter, all scientists know that. But the environment matters too and the random events that impinge upon you and alter your destiny.

  I should apologise to Anthony.

  A rustling in the bushes nearby startles me. Darkness is descending fast and I haven’t seen a soul for some time. Again I hear that sound, more a scratching than a rustling, and from higher up. Then I see the grey squirrel, transfixed on a branch of an oak tree. For a couple of heartbeats we size up each other before it scampers on.

  Suddenly I understand. Transferral, this is what I’ve been doing, and I don’t need Helen to explain it to me. I’ve shifted my anger with Jeff to Anthony. Like an immature adolescent, I’ve dumped it on him.

  Suddenly I want to see him; I want desperately to see him. He wasn’t going anywhere, he said, but that was half an hour ago. He will be on his way home by now. On his way home to his flat in Notting Hill, on his way home to pack his bag for the return to Massachusetts tomorrow. He will be writing off today’s experiences, and preparing to move on.

  I must see him again. Before it’s too late.

  I break into a jog, my rubber-soled shoes quiet on the bitumen paving. I sprint through rain so light it is like a mist, cold and cocooning. It blocks out all sound but my panting as I fight for breath. The woods are silent: not a human being, not a dog, not a bird around. And where is the bench Anthony and I were sitting on earlier? Nowhere in sight. In the fading light the trees all look the same, gnarled giants that must be hundreds of years old, and I wonder if I’m running in circles rather than retracing my steps. Water begins to trickle down my neck and I fear I’ll never see Anthony again. I stop running and double over, a cramp clutching at my stomach. My heart is pumping too hard as I struggle to get air into my lungs.

  The cramp goes, and I walk on more slowly, hoping I’m heading in the right direction. The trees open up. Now there is a grassy expanse beside the path and I almost trip over a bench. It could be the one we were sitting on earlier but there is no sign of Anthony. The mist presses down on me, heavy like my heart. I am too late: I have been an idiot. Exhausted, I collapse onto the wet timber seat.

  At this moment I see a figure twenty metres away, standing on the grass, his back towards me. I call out Anthony’s name and he turns. He has stayed here as he said he would; he has waited for me.

  ‘I knew you’d come back,’ he says, ‘but I didn’t expect you to take this long.’

  Though I smile at him, he doesn’t smile back. His hair is ruffled; his face expressionless. He looks older than his years and tired, almost vulnerable.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Anthony,’ I say.

  I hold out both hands to him, the same gesture that he used to me earlier. He reaches out and pulls me close. I rest my cheek against his, feeling his stubble against my s
kin. We hold each other tightly and do not speak. While we are standing there the mist lifts and soon I begin to hear the distant murmur of traffic from the road ringing the heath.

  ‘Let’s go back to my flat,’ he says eventually.

  And so we head back to South End Green car park. We do not touch each other again; we walk side-by-side like an old married couple after a quarrel.

  Chapter 42

  NOW

  I wake with a start. It’s cold; the duvet has slipped off me and I’m naked. I fumble for it, then realise it’s not mine; of a different fabric, it’s slippery and cold to the touch. There’s a glimmer of light from the open door and I’m not in my own bed. At this point I remember: I’m in Anthony’s. Smiling, I reach out for him, but he is no longer beside me. The scent of him lingers though: Pears’ soap and clean skin.

  There is a lamp on the table next to the bed. I switch it on, a circle of bright light in this plain dark room. A peacock blue dressing gown is hanging from a hook behind the door. I get up and shrug it on; it’s of soft wool, cashmere mix perhaps, not a fabric I would have predicted as Anthony’s choice. Perhaps it was given to him by his parents. Or a former girlfriend. But that doesn’t matter. I am the one wearing it now.

  I walk across the carpeted hallway and stand at the doorway to the living room. Anthony is dressed; he is sitting at the large desk occupying one end of the room. There is a pile of papers in front of him; I watch him as he reads, so deeply absorbed that he hasn’t heard me. His head is tilted at an angle, and his profile is silhouetted against the light from the desk lamp. He looks peaceful, he looks unshakeable.

  I shift my weight from one foot to the other, and the floorboards under me creak in protest. Anthony raises his head. He smiles, he stands. I stay in the doorway as still as can be, unwilling to change anything, unwilling to spoil anything. He walks towards me; I watch his face, strong and reliable. He puts his hands on my shoulders and gently tilts me towards him as if I am a cardboard cut-out doll, so that my head is resting against his chest.

  After a few moments he takes my hand and leads me into the bedroom. He slips the peacock blue dressing gown off my shoulders; he pulls off his jumper and trousers and throws them onto a chair. We lie next to each other on the cool sheets and pull the duvet over us. I feel his warm skin, his skin like silk; his back so smooth. And everywhere his hands, everywhere his gentle fingers, stroking, exploring, arousing. His soft mouth consumes me, and the room turns as we are caught up in spinning whorls of light, then a flash, a blinding flash, a shuddering of our bodies, our body.

  This is what I should have been looking for. A man like Anthony.

  And I’ve found him now.

  Somewhere in his flat that I haven’t yet properly explored, a clock chimes. An antique clock like mine, it counts out the hours; it’s seven o’clock.

  ‘I’ll have to phone Charlie,’ I say when the clock falls silent. ‘And next I’ll go home.’

  Chapter 43

  NOW

  It’s Tuesday morning in late October. The gloomy grey sky pushes down so heavily it’s a relief to be buzzed into the shelter of Helen’s entrance hall. As I burst through the door, barely one minute late, I see her waiting for me at the top of the stairs, her face quizzical. I run up the stairs, giving a brief and breathless account of the traffic I’ve encountered, which she acknowledges with the smallest tilt of her head.

  Once in her consulting room, I kick off my shoes and stretch out on the sofa. Today I have no trouble deciding on what to tell her. I talk about Anthony’s surprise visit, about Charlie going AWOL, about Charlie discovering that her father died of a clot on the brain rather than a heart attack, and how she found out about her father’s violence to Zoë and to me.

  ‘Charlie was very angry with me at first,’ I explain. ‘She blamed me for not telling her earlier. She said I couldn’t bear to admit the past was less than perfect.’

  Helen says nothing. I wriggle my toes a little and wait. Surely she will write this down on her notepad. But there is no sound from behind me so I continue: ‘She said she’d always known Jeff wasn’t much of a father, but I shouldn’t have concealed his violence and the manner of his death. I think she’s right, Helen. I delayed telling her because I couldn’t accept it. I needed to preserve the fiction that the past hadn’t been so bad.’

  ‘So you saw the failure of your marriage as your fault not Jeff’s,’ Helen says flatly.

  ‘Maybe I did feel that his death was my fault. That if I hadn’t left him he’d still be alive today.’

  ‘So you viewed Jeff’s violence as your fault and not as his?’

  ‘No, Helen.’ Persistence is her middle name. ‘It’s as I explained before – I never regarded his violence as my fault. His death maybe; in part.’ I hesitate, thinking of the hard shove I’d given him that last evening, when he had punched me at the top of the stairs. Thinking of the way he’d pirouetted in front of me before bumping down the steep staircase onto that ghastly tiled surface below. Of how lucky I’d been that there were two witnesses to his act of violence, Zoë and Mrs Gates.

  ‘But I’ve never regarded his violence as my fault.’ I pause again, knowing that I have to get something clear in my head. I think of what Charlie said last Sunday morning, that everything always has to be perfect with me. And now I can remember the thought I filed away immediately after she had made that statement. Helen might have a point: maybe I did unconsciously think I deserved Jeff’s punishment. But the reason for this is almost too subtle to articulate; no wonder I had trouble recalling it.

  ‘You were talking about Jeff,’ Helen reminds me.

  ‘Yes. Talking and thinking about Jeff.’ I’ve almost forgotten Helen, so preoccupied am I with my thoughts. ‘I’ve realised something, Helen. Maybe you were right. When you’re deciding to hook up with someone, you think about the probability of success or failure and you calculate the expected outcome.’

  My words sound pompous; but that’s what I am, a pompous academic. I shut my eyes and struggle on. ‘Then, if you’ve had a good throw of the dice and the relationship works, you stay. You’ve done better than expected. If you’ve had a bad throw, you’ve done worse than expected. And what do you do when you discover that? It depends on how bad. But whatever the throw of the dice, there was never anything wrong with your initial decision. When you made your choice, you just did the best you could with the information you had at the time. And so you shouldn’t think you were a failure.’

  Helen says nothing and I am in no hurry to continue. I open my eyes again and observe that she has, since my last session, introduced an additional element into her peaceful stable room, a room in which all that has changed until now is her outfit and the flowers in her vase: a new painting is hanging on the wall at right angles to me. It’s a watercolour of a semi-abstract landscape, perhaps somewhere in East Anglia; its strong horizontal lines define a vast sky. I wonder if Helen realises this change might have a profoundly unsettling effect on her patients. Not on me though; I am calm, I am tranquil.

  I think of Anthony and the last Scrabble game that we played, and the word ‘lucky’ that we had constructed on the board. There is so much luck involved when you choose a mate. Luck and the unconscious needs of your genetic makeup. Attraction has to do with genetics. You’re attracted to someone because their genes are dissimilar to your own and by choosing that person you thereby ensure the best chance for survival of your genes. But as well as all this there is an element of luck, that simple twist of fate. The fact that my marriage to Jeff turned out to be bad didn’t mean my judgement was flawed. And so I didn’t deserve the punishment my husband had meted out.

  ‘You were right, Helen,’ I tell her. ‘At some level I did think I deserved Jeff’s violence. It was almost as if he was punishing me for my lack of judgement in picking him.’ I pause and listen to Helen writing on her pad. I owe her an apology. ‘And I was so aggressive to you when you said I felt I’d deserved it. I really must apologise for that.�
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  ‘That does not matter, Sally. But you misinterpret what I said to you. I did not ever say that you thought you deserved it. I merely asked you to consider the possibility that you might have felt that you deserved it.’

  I laugh and struggle to sit up from my prone position on the sofa. I look around at Helen. She is regarding me benevolently, as if I am a child who has performed better than anticipated. ‘You speak like a lawyer,’ I say, ‘dealing in niceties.’

  ‘I speak like a psychotherapist,’ she says, putting down her pen and pad.

  I don’t lie down again but sit cross-legged on Helen’s sofa.

  ‘You have made your own way to this conclusion,’ Helen says. ‘It has not always been easy.’

  ‘Too right it hasn’t. Can I ask you something personal?’

  ‘No, Sally.’

  ‘But I’m going to anyway. You can choose to ignore it. That’s what life is, a series of choices.’ Helen’s calm expression doesn’t alter, so I put my question to her, the one that has been on my mind for some time. ‘Have you ever been in a violent relationship, Helen?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ she says, with some hesitation. ‘Many years ago. But that is all I am going to say to you about it. Ever.’

  We look at each other. She smiles suddenly, her astonishingly sweet smile. I feel a great affection for her and yet I know next to nothing about her. We have a professional relationship not a personal one. And that is why I can now divulge something else about Jeff. Because our relationship is professional Helen will never tell anyone else. This is something that I won’t reveal to Charlie, never to Charlie. She does not need to know this. But if I tell Helen maybe I can put it all behind me. I look at my watch; twenty-five minutes until the session ends.

  ‘There’s something else, Helen. It’s confidential.’ I lie down on the sofa again. I cross one leg over the other, noting as I do so that a small hole is developing in the toe of my tights.