All the Hopeful Lovers

by William Nicholson

  Meg has asked to see him.

  He dreads the meeting and is ashamed of himself for dreading it. So many fears. Suddenly his life is beset by fears. Belinda seems to have more or less stopped speaking to him.

  Clearly he’s to blame. And yet, in the privileged sanctuary of his own thoughts, he feels himself to be innocent. Innocent both in the sense that he has not committed a crime, and in the other sense, that he is without evil intent.

  One man can love more than one woman. That’s how men are made. Why turn it into a crime? Why assume that what’s given to one must be taken from another? Why this obsession with all-or-nothing? Whose big idea was it that the act of copulation is the closing of a lock, that once joined two lovers become bound together in a legal union that can’t be undone? The fuck itself, the fuck alone, has become the declaration of fidelity. What’s that all about? There are a million levels of intimacy, and here they are, reduced to two: you’re friends, or you’re lovers. If you don’t fuck, you’re friends. If you do fuck, you’re lovers. And lovers get to have rights over each other. You get the right to be outraged, wounded, betrayed if your lover fucks anyone else.

  But there are fucks and fucks, right? There’s the spur-of-the-moment fuck that means nothing, except that the opportunity came up and you both thought it might be fun. There’s the nameless fuck, with a call girl in a hotel room. There’s the holiday fuck, which neither of you wants to bring home.

  Or am I missing something fundamental here? Is the act of sex for a woman simply too intimate and vulnerable ever to be spur-of-the-moment or nameless? Is it always and of its nature possessive? Like a ticket-operated turnstile, you can go in but you can’t come out. Sex as a one-way street. If that’s the way it is, God help us all. Us all men, that is.

  Belinda crying in bed. No, I never wanted to hurt her.

  A flash of memory. They’re side by side on the sofa in the living room of her flat by Battersea Bridge. They’re kissing, his hands moving over her body, not undressing her but wanting to be closer. Then she’s leaning away from him, crossing her arms over her head, pulling up her blouse, slipping off her bra, so that he can see and touch her beautiful breasts. With the excitement comes a surge of gratitude for this gift of nakedness. He remembers how he kissed her breasts.

  There it is. Gratitude. Of her own free will she gives; he, grateful, receives. The obligation is on his side. The repayment comes in fidelity, and now he has broken the bargain. How can he ever say to her how much he has longed for a reciprocal gratitude?

  He wants to be wanted.

  Meg wants me.

  Is she pretty? Is she young? Is she sexy?

  Don’t ask about her, ask about me. Am I pretty? Am I young? Am I sexy?

  Yes, I know, the very idea is comical. There you have it. But I never meant to hurt you, Belinda. I love you. I don’t want you to leave me. I’m sorry. I should have been more grateful. But it’s done now.

  *

  Later. He calls Meg in her office, suggests she comes over to his consulting room. He tells Michelle he doesn’t want to be disturbed, without offering any explanation because none is necessary. Meg will sit where his patients sit when they have consultations on surgery. Not the most appropriate setting for the words that must be exchanged between them, but where else are they to go? All public places expose them to the view of colleagues. Meg’s flat, the arena of their private life, would be a cruel setting for this last encounter.

  What demeanour is proper to these circumstances? Tom finds himself so bewildered by his role as bad boy that he hardly knows which way to turn. Should he be sad and calm? Should he be distressed and incoherent? Should he be passionate? People say, as if it were obvious, just be yourself. But he has many selves.

  As he sits at his desk waiting for Meg to come, failing to work on his backlog of case reports, he asks himself a simple question: what do I want?

  I want to keep my wife and my home and my family. Therefore Meg and I have to stop seeing each other. At the same time I want to go on seeing Meg. So knowing what you want achieves precisely nothing.

  Meg comes. Closes the door behind her.

  ‘Is it all right me coming here?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all right,’ he says. ‘It’s somewhere where we can talk.’

  She looks white, defeated. She sits in the chair facing him and hangs her head. Her physical presence shocks him. He wants to reach out and touch her, hold her in his arms. He wants her to be so close to him that no words are necessary. But she sits on the far side of his desk, and he finds it hard to look at her.

  ‘I suppose we should never have got into this in the first place,’ he says.

  As he speaks he realizes he’s saying, I didn’t do this on my own. You’re responsible too. Is that unfair? They share the guilt but somehow she gets a bigger slice of the pain.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I suppose not.’

  Her voice dull and far away.

  ‘Belinda’s in quite a state. I’m sorry about telling you over the phone. I just felt I had no choice.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s not what I want, Meg. But there’s no point in me saying that.’

  ‘Yes. There is.’ She looks up at him now, and he sees in her eyes that she doesn’t understand how he’s taking all this, and wants to understand. ‘I want you to say all of it.’

  ‘I’ve got no secrets from you, Meg.’

  ‘No. But we’ve never really talked.’

  ‘I suppose we haven’t.’

  ‘It didn’t matter before. But I need to know now.’

  For a long moment he doesn’t speak. He’s feeling a panic impulse to shut this conversation down. Again, he feels shock. What am I so afraid of?

  ‘Look,’ he says. ‘I don’t see that there’s any point in agonizing over it. We have to stop seeing each other. I don’t want that, you don’t want that, but that’s how it is. What else is there to say?’

  ‘It would help me,’ she says. She speaks humbly, not making demands, appealing to his pity, which makes him restless.

  ‘We’ve always known it couldn’t go on for ever,’ he says.

  Back into the first person plural. We did this as consenting adults.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I know it has to stop now. But there’s something I have to ask you. I’m not trying to get anything out of you, Tom. I just need to know for my own sake. When you came to me in my flat, who were you coming to see?’

  Tom allows himself to look puzzled. He’s not puzzled, he’s in flight. Running scared. He understands at once what she’s asking him, but he has no idea how to answer.

  ‘Well, you,’ he says. ‘Who else?’

  ‘So it was me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, acting as if this is self-evident. ‘Of course it was you.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she says, ‘I think it could have been anyone. Anyone who was willing to give you what you wanted.’

  His heart pounding. Always the same. The man wants, the woman grants. Not you too, Meg,

  ‘I thought you wanted it too,’ he says.

  ‘Yes. I did. I do.’

  ‘Then why are you saying all this?’

  ‘I just need to know it was me you came for. That it couldn’t have been just anyone.’

  ‘It was you, Meg.’

  She gazes at him, imploring him.

  ‘Can you say more?’

  ‘What more is there to say?’

  Run. Get away. What more can he offer her? Love? This thing that women distinguish from sex, the sticky residue that’s left over when you take sex out of the equation. The thing that lasts, where everyone knows sex is fleeting. But love and sex can’t be separated like this, they’re both somewhere in the seething mess along with vanity and habit and dread and self-doubt. Even on its own no one knows what love is. Is it the flush of infatuation? Is it the confession of desperate need? Or a heightened form of friendship? Take away sex and love is either an anxious longing or a deep-rooted familiarity. Add sex and it�
�s much the same, with the occasional spasm of intimacy. Whatever it is, for all the propaganda for the coupled state, it’s a private affair. None of us really knows what it means to be loved. We know only that we do deals with others to mitigate our loneliness. You act like my existence has some value, and I’ll do the same for you. Let’s live in a state of mutual deception.

  Meg says, Was it me? Could it have been anyone? What can I say? Yes, it could have been anyone, but it wasn’t anyone. It was you. Hold on to that. It was the real you I came to in your flat, not some figment of my imagination. Please don’t ask for any more meaning than that. Who we meet, who we love, it’s all accident. But once the accident has happened it becomes individual. Don’t read life backwards, keep going forwards. I could have been anyone too, Meg. But I turned out to be me.

  ‘I don’t know what I want you to say, really,’ says Meg. ‘I feel so miserable. I know that’s not fair. We never made any promises. It had to stop one day. I do know all that. But when I think I may never see you again, at least not in that way, I get this frightening feeling that we never really knew each other at all. Like we’ve been strangers all along.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ says Tom.

  ‘Don’t you feel it?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve felt closer to you than almost anyone in my life.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why do you doubt it?’

  ‘Isn’t that just sex?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s just sex. Which is just the intensest way I know how to live.’

  ‘But you can have sex with anybody.’

  ‘Then why do I do it with you?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you, Tom. Why me?’

  Because I thought you wanted to have sex with me. But this is the one answer he can’t give.

  ‘I can’t analyse it, Meg. What is it people say? We clicked. Didn’t you feel it?’

  ‘Yes. I did. But if you ask me why, I can tell you. Because of your smile. Because you have beautiful hands. Because you’re the best at what you do. Because you wear funny ties. Because of the way you look at me. Because of the way you touch me.’

  ‘I could say all of that back to you. Except the bit about the funny ties.’

  ‘Then say it.’

  He starts to speak, and breaks off. Some inhibition closes his throat. What’s so hard about repeating a few words as an act of kindness? But some inner censor cuts him off each time he begins to speak.

  He gets up, walks to the window, hoping that with his back to her the words will come, but they don’t.

  ‘I know it’s over,’ she says. ‘I’m just asking you to leave me in a better place than you found me.’ Close to tears now. ‘Don’t send me back to where I was before, Tom. Please.’

  Tom has no idea what demon has possession of him. But the more pitifully she asks for loving words the less he is able to utter them. Some instinct of self-preservation has him in its powerful grip. Nothing to do with Belinda and loyalty to his marriage. This is about fear of being needed. Fear of responsibility for the happiness of another.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you this,’ he says at last. ‘I’ve had the best sex of my whole life with you.’

  She gives a small muffly laugh.

  ‘Have you, Tom? So have I.’

  ‘That’s something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. More than something.’

  ‘You’re a wonderful lover, Meg.’

  ‘Am I? I want to be.’

  ‘You are.’

  He’s not giving her what she asks for, but it’s something. He’s not choking on his words any more.

  ‘You’re a natural,’ he says. ‘You understand instinctively what a man wants.’

  ‘That’s because you told me. And I wanted it to be good for you.’

  ‘And for you.’

  ‘Yes. For me too.’

  But Tom can’t deceive himself any longer. He had believed that with Meg he had found a mutuality of desire, but it was only wishful thinking. For Meg, sex was a means to another end.

  ‘You never thought I’d leave my wife or something, did you?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘I never said anything to make you think that.’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘It was our secret other life, wasn’t it? Our stolen pleasures.’

  His phone buzzes. Michelle.

  ‘I know you said not to disturb you, but Mrs Lazarus is waiting.’

  ‘Oh, God, is that the time? Tell her two minutes.’

  Meg is already on her feet.

  ‘Meg. I’m sorry.’

  She gives him an odd look, almost as if she pities him.

  ‘I’m sorry too.’

  ‘I’m no good at this sort of thing. I don’t know what to say. I feel terrible. I’ve just made a mess of everything, haven’t I?’

  ‘Not just a mess,’ she says. ‘Not just something to be sorry for.’

  ‘No, you’re right. I’m not sorry, really. It’s been so special. Can’t we hold onto that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He opens his arms, inviting her for a last kiss. She comes to him and leans against him. He holds her in his arms, kisses her cheek. She’s crying.

  ‘Now, now. None of that.’

  ‘It’s been more than special, Tom.’ She takes out a tissue and dries her eyes. ‘You’ve changed my life.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘But you have no idea, do you?’

  One last hurt smile and she leaves his consulting room, walking fast. No goodbyes.

  And now comes the pang of loss. Now he can say all the words she longs to hear. I need you, Meg. I love you. I think about you all the time. Now that she’s walking so briskly out of his life.

  You changed my life too, Meg. Only I don’t yet know how.

  26

  Chloe climbs the stairs from the tube station and comes out onto the crowded pavement at Oxford Circus. The Christmas illuminations hang unlit overhead. People are moving slowly, forcing their way doggedly through the throng. Red buses line up at the traffic lights like islands round which flow the eddies of Christmas shoppers. A dull cloud-shuttered day which makes the shop windows bright, enticing.

  Her phone wakes up after its underground hibernation and bip-bips as texts come through. Pippa, one of her Exeter housemates. Baz, still hoping. A passing man stares at her, apparently unaware that if he can see her she can see him. She knows that look, the sullen and insolent gape of desire from a man who does not expect to be desired in return. You’re on the money there, pal. You’d think men like that would have some shame. Fifty at least, overweight, in a ski jacket and jeans. He doesn’t care what I think. About Dad’s age.

  Did Dad stare like that?

  She’s been not thinking about her father all the way up from Sussex on the train. Really she’s been not thinking about him since she learned about his affair. It sits there, just out of her vision, like a dark mass. Not offensive, just embarrassing. Him wanting her forgiveness.

  She shudders, and looks into the glowing windows of Top Shop. Not that she can afford to buy anything. What is it about money? Her dad gives her £500 a month on top of her rent, it’s much more than most of her friends, but it never lasts to the end of the month. Coming up on the train today, that’s nearly twenty for a start. At least she’ll get a free lunch.

  Jesus, Oxford Street goes on for ever. Who are all these people? Isn’t there supposed to be a recession? The free-newspaper pushers try to make eye contact. What do you make in a job like that? Has to be rubbish money or they’d have better-looking people. How hard is it to give something away for free? The picture on the front page is Bush in Iraq ducking a flying shoe. Apparently a shoe is seriously insulting. Who knew?

  A smile from a pretty boy loping towards her in a cute Pete Doherty hat. She smiles back. He raises one hand and shoots her with a thumb and extended finger, and goes on by. So many boys, so many missed chances. He could have been the one. How are you supposed to know? E
xcept they all turn into boring creeps in the end. Not even in the end, after a week. If you’re lucky. She looks back but he’s disappeared into the crowd.

  Dad having sex, that is so sick. There should be a law, you reproduce and that’s it. No more porking. You’ve had your day, now show some self-respect and act your age. Apparently old age pensioners still do it. We’re supposed to go Aah! That’s so romantic, but it’s not, it’s just gross. There should be a word for it, like paedophilia or bestiality. Wrinklefuck. Please.

  Off Oxford Street at last, round by the umpteenth branch of Prêt à Manger into Radcliffe Place. The restaurant’s up here, she Googled it before leaving home. In Charlotte Street.

  Turns out there’s nothing but restaurants, both sides of the street. It’s called Passione: small, Italian, smart. Chloe approves. She checks her watch, she’s not as late as she’d hoped, but when she looks in through the window she can see him inside, at a table. He’s reading a magazine, drinking a glass of wine. He looks like he’s in his own home.

  Why am I here? Because he asked me. Why not?

  She goes in to the warmth, feels her face turn pink. Guy Caulder looks up from his magazine.

  ‘How about that?’ he says. ‘I bet myself a fiver you wouldn’t come.’

  ‘I said I’d come,’ says Chloe, shrugging off her coat. A nice waiter takes it from behind her.

  Guy subjects her to a critical examination. Chloe doesn’t mind, she’s taken trouble with her clothes. Mostly boys never notice.

  ‘You look stunning,’ he says.

  ‘Well, it is Christmas.’

  She sits down, feeling suddenly unsure of herself. Guy’s never taken his eyes off her.

  ‘No shopping?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said you were coming up to town to do some shopping.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Later.’

  ‘Have a drink.’