Apple Tree Yard

by Louise Doughty

  A few yards further on, there is the statue of the weeping woman. I have passed it before: it’s a noticeable sort of statue. There is an ordinary stone plinth with a bronze bust on top: Arthur Sullivan, 1842–1900, the kind of thing you see in parks all over London, the forgotten philanthropists, or composers or writers, the generals and explorers and educationalists, those Victorians who built us. But this one is different, for leaning against the stone is the life-size form of a young woman, also cast in bronze. She is turned away from passers-by, weeping against the pillar, one arm above her head, stretching upwards, and the other bent so that she can bury her face in it. Her perfect, lithe body is resting in an attitude of utter despair.

  I pause. You pause too and, still without speaking, we look at the young bronze woman, the curve of her firm, high breasts – she is topless in the classical mode, of course – the robes gathered around her hips, the half-dressed hair that flows in tendrils down her back. Her despair is the despair of youth, I think. She is every first-year student who has woken on a Sunday morning and remembered that last night, at that party, the young man she loved left with his arm round someone else. She is someone who thinks that despair is a country she has entered, like a desert where she will die of thirst. I remember heartbreak at that age, how all-consuming it was. Is heartbreak even possible now, I wonder? I’m fifty-two. Anyone my age knows that all things pass. If the transitory nature of our feelings means that true heartbreak is impossible then where does that leave happiness?

  Something about her has made us stop and look. We still have barely spoken to each other. You take a few steps round the side of the plinth and read the inscription. I come and stand by you and look at it while you read aloud.

  IS LIFE A BOON?

  IF SO, IT MVST BEFAL

  THAT DEATH WHENE’ER HE CALL

  MVST CALL TOO SOON

  Through the middle of the poem, running from the top of the plinth to almost halfway down, there is a long streak of green mould.

  ‘It’s death she’s upset about,’ I murmur. ‘I always thought it was love.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a no-win situation, really, according to the poem,’ you say. ‘Either life is a boon, in which case we should all be weeping because death is going to come and spoil everything, and soon. Or else, well, or else life isn’t a boon after all, just a grim old business.’

  I look at you. ‘Which side of the argument do you fall on?’ I try not to sound too serious when I ask this question.

  You look at me, unfooled by my facetiousness. Then you reach out a hand and touch a heavy lock of hair that hangs to one side of my chin, twisting it between your fingers. ‘Me?’ you say, staring at me. ‘Me? I think life is a boon.’

  We move towards each other. Your hands go to either side of my face, your warm rough palms against my cold soft cheeks. I tip my face up to you and close my eyes.

  Without speaking, we leave the weeping girl behind and within a moment have reached the edge of the gardens. Temple Tube station is brightly lit, the coffee and flower stalls outside are not particularly busy – it is past the peak of the rush hour, almost dark. Just past the Tube, we turn left down a narrow road called Temple Place that leads away from the river. Temple Place narrows further and becomes Milford Lane, which ends in a tiny yard with a brick entrance through which I can just see a row of stone steps.

  ‘Can you get up to the Strand through there?’ I ask. I haven’t been this way before.

  ‘Yes,’ you say, ‘It comes out just below the Royal Courts of Justice.’

  But it isn’t justice or the bright lights of the Strand you have in mind. You turn on me. One hand goes behind my head, fingers entwined in my hair, the other to my shoulder. You pull my mouth towards yours. At the same time, you press forward, forcing me to stumble backwards against the wall, just to the right of the entranceway to the steps. I let out an involuntary gasp.

  You stop and look around, with the intent glance I now know means you are doing what you have previously referred to as a risk assessment. To your right – my left – there is a building but no windows look down on us. On the other side – I follow your gaze upwards – there is a CCTV camera but it is turned away from us, pointing up another alleyway. You kiss me, briefly, firmly, then move your head back a little so you can continue to glance from side to side while slipping your hand inside my coat, pushing my thighs apart. ‘Oh…’ I say, but this time it is more a groan than a gasp, deeper, more resonant, within.

  At that point, there comes the scrape of shoes on stone, a hasty approach. We spring apart, my coat falls back, I let out a snort of amused alarm and a young man in a business suit rushes down the stone steps and out into the yard, hurrying past us without a glance, heading for the Tube. You are facing away from me now and the yard is unlit so it is only as you turn back, a smile on your face, that I see you are holding a cigarette between two fingers.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked!’ My voice is breathy from our near discovery.

  ‘I don’t’ you say, dropping the cigarette back into your pocket. ‘I keep one in my left pocket – explains all sorts of things, why you’re outside, why you’re loitering, and you can approach people for a light if you need to. Newspapers are good too. No one ever looks at someone reading the Evening Standard on the street and wonders why they are standing there. They are just someone reading the paper.’

  More footsteps on the stone, heels this time, two young women in smart skirts and jackets come down the steps together, talking to each other. One of them gives me a look as she passes, a dismissive sort of look, as though she might think ill of me if she could be bothered to think of me at all.

  You take my arm, ‘Come on,’ you say. ‘I was planning on coming inside you but it’s still too busy round here.’

  *

  Back at the Tube, you turn to me and say, ‘Right then,’ and I realise you are planning on leaving me here to get the Underground while you go on elsewhere. I experience a moment of confusion – suddenly, you seem to be in a hurry to depart. But if we had achieved solitude in the little yard back then, you wouldn’t have been thinking about rushing off at this particular moment. You would be focused on me.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ I say, ‘I’ll get it from here. See you then, talk tomorrow,’ and turn quickly. I am determined to be the one walking away.

  I am no more than a step or two away before you catch up with me and take my arm, ‘Hey…’ you say.

  We stop, facing each other. I look down at your shoes. What sort of stupid game are we playing anyway? We’re both middle-aged. It’s ridiculous. We are ridiculous.

  ‘You’ve been there before, haven’t you?’ I mumble, and it is only as I say it that I realise that that is what is bothering me. I had thought we were ambling along Victoria Embankment but you knew exactly where we were going. You had a plan. Perhaps you were even deliberately late to meet me because you thought there was a better chance of us using that alleyway the darker it got.

  You sigh. It is a sigh that makes me feel childish. ‘Look…’ you say, and I wait. I am not going to help you out this time by pretending I am as casual about this as you are. All at once, I refuse to let you off the hook. ‘You know, you know me by now…’ you say. You lift a hand and run it through your hair. Your expression is a little pleading. Around us, people hurry to and fro, people who are late getting home. No one looks at us as they rush past.

  ‘Is it, is it what you do?’ I ask, and I keep my tone deliberately light. I don’t want to panic you into lying to me.

  ‘Well, yes,’ you say. ‘It’s what I do, it’s what I’ve always…’

  ‘What, kind of, your thing?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it, it’s my thing. It’s just what turns me on, I suppose. Car parks, toilets, out of doors, I don’t know. I suppose...’ You lift your hands helplessly.

  There are a million questions in my head, starting with, does your wife know? Do you do this with her, or have you ever done? And continuing with, so just ho
w many affairs have you had before me?

  You shrug, boyishly, look at me and grimace. ‘I just find it, I don’t know, it’s the naughtiness of it, I suppose, the risk factor, I don’t know. Look, I guess it’s a sort of addiction, a kind of adrenaline. Loads of people do it or other things like it. Everybody wants to take risks sometimes, don’t they? I look at the people I work with and it’s just a question of what form their risk-taking takes. One of my colleagues goes paragliding at the weekends. He breaks his collarbone every time he lands. He has four children. At least I don’t jump off cliffs.’

  No, I think, a little bitterly, you just ask other people to. We are standing outside Temple Tube in the mid-evening dark and it’s colder than it should be this time of year. It occurs to me that I am not turned on by the possibility of discovery – the opposite in fact. What turns me on is the thought of a hotel room, crisp white sheets and plump soft furnishings, low lighting, mirrors only we can see, anonymity and privacy, being somewhere where no one can find me, but all I say is, ‘Well I guess this is a conversation we will have to have another time.’

  ‘Let’s have it now,’ you say, and I smile inwardly for the one thing I am sure of is that there is nothing more likely to keep you with me than the thought that I might be withholding information. I am reminded of what Susannah said to me once: There’s a certain sort of man whose very charm lies in his predictability. I would repeat this remark to you but suspect you would find it offensive.

  ‘Go on,’ you lean in towards me.

  I shake my head a little, but smilingly.

  You lift a finger and give a gentle but decisive stab at my forehead. ‘What’s going on in there, then? Right now, what’s going on in there?’

  I look around. ‘We’re pretty close.’ I mean to the area where you work, and that there’s a chance someone who knows you might go past. But I’m prevaricating. I wasn’t worried about that when we kissed in Victoria Embankment Gardens, and we were closer then.

  You fold your arms and glower at me, playing interrogator, ‘Well you’d better tell me what’s on your mind then, or we could be here a while.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ I ask, and even to my own ears, it sounds a feeble question. ‘The risky sex, what does it mean?’

  To your credit, you take the question seriously. You shrug. ‘It doesn’t mean anything, I don’t think. It’s just what I like, like some people like it in the mornings and some people want to dress up and others like it best in the shower. Some people like chocolate sauce, I don’t know. It doesn’t mean anything.’ A group of women in high heels, tripping out somewhere, shove past us so close that you have to take my elbow and pull me gently to the side, but still no one looks at us. We are just a man and a woman having a conversation before they part.

  I am in something of a fix. What I really want to know is, have you taken another woman down that little lane, like you did with me just now, and I’m guessing the answer is yes and that last time it was more successful because it was later in the evening. But I can’t ask that without sounding insecure, and in a minute you’re going to guess I’m feeling insecure anyway and suddenly I can’t stand the humiliation of that and there is only one way to deflect your attention so I say, ‘Want to know what I fantasise about?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Alien abduction.’

  Your stare turns into What?

  I smile and nod. ‘I do, I fantasise that I’ve been kidnapped by aliens, and I’m on a round white bed, completely naked of course, and there’s a sort of balcony around the bed, all the way round, and on the balcony are aliens, and they are all looking down at me, at me being naked – small men with pointy heads.’

  ‘You’re making this up.’

  I laugh at him. ‘Er, yes, it’s a fantasy.’

  ‘No, I mean you’re making this up on the spot. You’re taking the mickey.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m not, I promise, honestly, it’s what I think about quite often, in the middle, you know, I’m on the round white bed, and it’s warm.’

  ‘Pointy heads?’

  ‘I know, pretty obvious, eh?’

  You raise a hand and scratch the back of your head. ‘I don’t know, for some reason I thought the sexual fantasy of one of the nation’s top analytical scientists would be something a little more sophisticated.’

  ‘Sophisticated as in doing it down back alleys during rush hour?’

  A brief pause. ‘One-nil.’ We are smiling at each other, the tension broken. I have convinced you I am your equal in this sort of banter. I have managed to swerve away from a moment of humiliation.

  Pride is a terrible thing. It is what makes me turn away from you at that point, when all I really want to do is walk along the river hand in hand, then go down to the South Bank and sit in the bar at the Royal Festival Hall and listen to some jazz if someone is playing, then have dinner in a restaurant somewhere, our knees brushing against each other beneath the table. Pride is what makes me leave you without even asking if such a scenario is possible. I want to do it so much I can’t stand the thought of being turned down. My husband is at a concert tonight. I could be out all night, if I wanted. Maybe you could too. Maybe you headed towards the Tube because you were just assuming I had to be home. Maybe we are about to miss out on the rare opportunity of a whole evening together because neither of us will raise it as an option, neither of us wanting to be the one who is available.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I say, as I turn.

  You don’t even try to give me a chaste, public embrace but raise your hand in farewell, let me go. I pause in the Tube hall to renew my Oyster card in the hope you might follow me in but you don’t, of course. It’s all I can do to steel myself not to run down the road after you even though I don’t even know which direction you were going in, whether you were going home or back to your office, to a late meeting elsewhere, or a leaving do or an evening with friends or… to meet another woman, perhaps, now darkness has fallen and the alleyways are emptying. I have no idea, and no right to ask.

  As I go through the barrier, the phone you gave me buzzes in my pocket and I lift it out. You have texted: When get home, send me pic of what you do when you think about the men with pointy heads. Please! And despite myself I smile, for I know I have to take this for what it is and to try and feel that life is a boon – confusing sometimes, and frustrating often, but a boon.

  *

  That night, I wake up about an hour after my husband and I have gone to sleep. He is turned away from me, on his side, snoring softly. I can just see his form from the green glow given out by the clock that throws the time in large digits on our ceiling. We both like a little electric light while we sleep, the legacy of all those years we left a landing light on and our door open in case one of the children woke in the night. The duvet has slipped down and his large, speckled back is exposed. The thinning patch of hair on the back of his head makes me feel protective towards him. I smile to myself as I think of how hard he is to stir sometimes, particularly in the first hour of sleep. My husband goes down into unconsciousness as surely and as swiftly as a deep-sea diver goes into the sea.

  I’m fucking a spook.

  That explains everything: the ease with which you move around the Palace of Westminster; the way in which you are mostly the master of your own timetable but then are suddenly called away on urgent business; your periods of silence. It explains why you are an adrenaline junkie, why when you want me you are capable of pestering me with calls or texts and want me absolutely now but at other times you seem almost indifferent. It explains your extreme secretiveness, the intensity of which has always struck me as beyond that required by simple adultery – the business with the pay-as-you-go phone, your banning email contact, the melodrama of our arrangements. Maybe that’s just how one conducts an affair when you are used to being involved with matters of national security.

  Now I know why you want to know so much about me but reveal so little about yourself; why you often seem con
vinced to the point of arrogance that you can persuade me to do anything you want, in the nicest possible way of course; why you know so much about CCTV cameras and camouflaging yourself on the street. With all these thoughts comes a thrill – is it excitement or fear or some weird combination of the two? If you are a spook, then what happens if you think I am holding out on you? Can you trace the location of that phone you gave me? Have you banned any written contact between us to protect me because your association with me could put me at risk? What happens if – and this thought feels new, fresh, damp from the egg – what happens if I want out?

  My husband murmurs in his sleep, turns over to face me, murmurs again, turns back. I think of the seriousness of the expression on your face when you gave me the pay-as-you-go phone. Have I completely misjudged you, what we are doing I mean, who or what you are? Is there any chance you could be vengeful or dangerous, that my husband could be at risk, maybe even my children? This thought makes my heart pound and I have to breathe deeply and say to myself, Don’t be stupid… no one is at risk… It’s the middle of the night. Everything is disproportionate in the middle of the night. It’s a well-known fact.

  Rationalise this, I think then. It’s just sex. It will peter out once this man loses interest and, once you’ve worked through his repertoire of favourite locations, he almost certainly will. That’s the kind of man he is. It will last three months at most. Your pride will be wounded and you’ll get your heart a little bit broken and you’ll think you deserve it, and you’ll moon around for a bit, then shake yourself down and everything will get back to normal. That’s all that’s going to happen.

  Should I feel more guilty or less because you work for the security services? I ask myself. But then I realise that guilt is not something that needs to be talked away in my head, not really; it is simply absent. The truth is – and it is not something I am proud of – I feel I am owed this. I am owed you. For twenty-eight years, I have done everything asked of me, worked hard and supported my family, loved my husband, raised my children. I have made my contribution to society. I recycle the newspapers every week. Doesn’t that buy me something? I am rationalising like a man, I think to myself. This is exactly what a man would say to himself the night after he has seduced his secretary. No one will ever know; no one will get hurt. But I have not seduced my secretary. I have chosen carefully, even though I didn’t know I was choosing at the time. I am doing this with a man who has the means and motivation to ensure we will never be exposed. I have not pursued a young and vulnerable woman over whom I have authority of some sort. I have not taken advantage of my position and allowed myself to become involved with someone who adores me, or fallen in love and had a wretched, two-year love affair involving comprehensive deceit of the person I live with. I have made my bargain. I’m fucking a spook. He’s a risk-taker. He likes pursuit, and novelty. It may sound dangerous but actually, it couldn’t be safer.