Apple Tree Yard

by Louise Doughty

  I can’t even remember what set off the argument that evening, some minor domestic matter, but whatever it was, in the midst of an otherwise innocuous debate I rounded on him, as we cleared up after a meal, suddenly finding myself with my hands clenched into fists, pressing my knuckles down on the counter-top, saying, brokenly, ‘You haven’t even told me her name!’

  Guy stopped where he was, halfway across the kitchen with a cheese grater in his hand, and looked at me, his expression one of astonishment followed swiftly by resignation. He turned and sat down at the table with a sigh. ‘Look…’ he said, putting the grater on the table in front of him.

  My voice, when it came, was weak and tremulous, almost a whisper. ‘You haven’t even told me her name…’ I repeated.

  ‘Rosa,’ he said, and the prettiness of the word lodged like a small piece of glass in my heart.

  After that, there was a long silence between us while he remained seated and I moved around the kitchen distractedly. Although we did not speak, we were both continuing the argument in our heads, and that became apparent the minute we opened our mouths.

  ‘Look, Yvonne…’

  ‘Yes, yes! Look!’

  ‘I haven’t…’

  ‘Haven’t what?’

  Silenced again, he pressed his lips together, evidently deciding that if I was going to be unreasonable, so was he. He pushed at the cheese grater with one finger and it tipped over with a clatter. ‘Well, you can either keep this up indefinitely or you can forgive me and move on.’

  ‘Oh come on, you got off pretty bloody lightly, don’t you think?’

  ‘Saint Yvonne,’ he sighed, rolling his eyes.

  ‘Would you?’ I snorted derisively.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, indignantly, ‘Yes, of course I would.’

  ‘You wouldn’t!’ I huffed, turning and opening the dishwasher, which I had loaded and set going only minutes before. Unprepared for my attentions, it billowed steam, gushed hot water. I slammed the door shut, turned on my husband. ‘If it had been me, I would never have heard the last of it. You would have held it against me for years.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ my husband said, his voice suddenly calm and conciliatory. He was right, it wasn’t true. I had only said it because it was the first thing in my head to throw at him. ‘I would have forgiven you; we would have talked it through. I love you, you love me, we would have put Adam and Carrie first like we always do, like we’re doing now. I would not have…’

  ‘Cared…?’ I mutter. That was closer to the mark, closer to what I really felt. Guy was rowing back from a full-blown row but I was not quite ready to, not just yet. I had a bit more energy left.

  ‘No that’s not it, of course I would have cared, I just would have been able to bear it, in the interests of keeping us together. I’m not possessive in that way, you know that. I never have been.’

  This was true, and admirable, but it didn’t make me feel good. I stopped bustling around the kitchen and leaned back against the counter-top, crossing my arms and staring at him through narrowed eyes. ‘So, in other words, you wouldn’t care.’ I hated myself when I argued like this.

  ‘I wouldn’t care so much about physical infidelity that I would let it ruin what we have together, no.’

  ‘What if I fell in love? What if I fell in love with someone else, like you did?’

  ‘I’m sorry, you know I am, you know how sorry I am…’

  And for the first time in this discussion, my voice became a little softer too. ‘I’m not asking for another apology…’ I go to the table, sit opposite him, reach out and take his hand. ‘I’m interested, seriously, do you think you would, forgive me? If I fell in love with someone else, really?’ My motive for this was not entirely intellectual. It wouldn’t do him any harm, I thought, to contemplate the possibility. He looked over at me. ‘I’m not planning on doing it,’ I laughed a little, ‘I’m just interested.’

  This was always the way to pique my husband’s interest, to appeal to his analytical side.

  He took the question seriously, thought for a bit. ‘You could have sex with someone else,’ he said, ‘and I wouldn’t like it, not at all, would much rather you didn’t, for the record. But I would deal with it by not thinking about it. If I imagined it I would hate it but I would manage not to imagine it, in the interests of preserving what we have, what we value, which we both know is something worth preserving.’

  ‘But what about love?’

  He paused again, thinking it through, trying to be honest, and I always did, still do, love this about my husband, that he doesn’t try and patronise me by saying what he thinks I want to hear. ‘Yes, I would forgive you if you fell in love with someone else,’ he said evenly. ‘It would be very painful for me of course, because I’m used to the idea that you love me and only me, but I know,’ he hesitated only for a second, ‘I do know now, that it is genuinely possible to love two people at the same time. Even at the height of, of what I was doing, I never stopped loving you, not for one second; in fact in some ways I was more in love than you than ever because I knew I was jeopardising what we had. I know that sounds like an excuse, but it’s true.’

  We sat for some time after that long speech. Like many men, emotional articulacy had not been my husband’s strong point in the past, for all his capacity for analysis, so I was impressed by the length of this speech and by the plain truth of what he said, touched by his capacity to be honest with himself, and me. I no longer wanted to score points off him or make him feel guilty. And then, just as I was beginning to feel warm towards him, he said something that reminded me that he was, after all, a man, and one with flaws, just as I was a woman with flaws.

  ‘There’s really only one thing I would find hard to forgive.’ I looked at him but he was looking down at our clasped hands, passing his thumb gently over my fingers, stroking them.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Public humiliation.’

  He looked at me then, and his gaze was cold.

  8

  We walk out of Apple Tree Yard and into Duke of York Street. You have left me before you have gone – this often happens – but I don’t feel wounded this time, more smug than anything: I am getting the hang of this. It is as if, at the age of fifty-two, I have discovered an unexpected ability to play the piccolo, or tap dance, something that was always latent within me that I had simply failed to explore. I am walking a step or two behind you and I reach inside my coat and brush down my dress. Then, hastening after you, I button the coat up to the top, push a hand through my hair; the small gestures that arrange me to be public again.

  We part at Piccadilly Circus Tube, you giving me a brusque hug, the sort I have come to expect, where you reach an arm around my back and give me a short, firm pull inwards, your forearm clutching me and releasing me the instant my body makes contact with yours. It is the sort of hug you could safely give me if your in-laws were passing by. I turn, and walk back down Piccadilly itself, cross at the pedestrian crossing and cut up Air Street. It will take me twenty minutes to get to the faculty party, walking harder than I would like to in my heels, and a light rain has started to fall, April rain, fine and drenching. I don’t mind – at that particular moment, I don’t mind anything.

  I am strutting, just a little, in my high-heeled boots – they are my stiletto ones, not the lower-heeled patent boots I was wearing when we first met: party boots, show-off boots. I look at the people rushing past me as I walk up Regent Street. How many of them are really in a hurry, I wonder? How many of them are on their way home? How many are running to something or away from something else? I know the rush-hour commute so well, it’s in my muscles. The hectic pace of those around me is infectious: it feels impossible, at this time of day, to walk down the street slowly, to avoid shoving and pushing if you get on a crowded bus or Tube. How many of the people rushing past me are happy, I wonder? I am happy. A double life; and I’m good at it. Maybe it’s me that should be the spook.

  I have crossed Ox
ford Street and am zigzagging north and east through the backstreets when something unusual happens. A woman is walking towards me, a small woman, even shorter than myself, Japanese, expensively dressed in a green silk dress and short leather jacket. She is answering a call on her phone, opening the conversation quite happily. She has several large shopping bags on the other shoulder. After a couple of sentences, while she is still a few feet away from me, she stops dead in the street. Her face becomes a mask. The shopping bags drop from her shoulder. Her knees buckle and she collapses on to the pavement, letting out a cry as she falls but still clutching the phone to her ear.

  I stop where I am for a moment, then approach. She is sobbing and shouting into the phone in Japanese. Clearly she has just been given some terrible news. One minute she was walking along with her shopping, the next, she gets a phone call and she is on her knees, in the rain, crying and shouting.

  I hesitate in front of her. After a minute I say, ‘I’m sorry, can I help you?’

  She looks up at me, her expression both bewildered and dismissive, as if she can’t understand why I am standing in front of her or what I might be saying, baffled and angry through her mist of tears. Then she returns to shouting and crying into the phone.

  It seems prurient to stand there, so I step past her and continue up the street. When I glance back, she is still on her knees, still crying.

  *

  The party is in full swing by the time I reach the group of buildings known as the Dawson Complex – the main hub of the University’s administrative offices and the home of several lecture theatres. The Head of Science made it very clear in the invitation email that although the University is providing the venue, the food and wine are on him. A gang of students has been pressed into service as catering staff and as I stride into the foyer, my heels clicking sharply, I am greeted by a line of undergraduates with clipboards waiting to tick off guests’ names. This is not typical of university parties, which don’t normally involve anything as fancy as a guest list – usually it’s plastic cups and white wine at room temperature – but this party is different, a bit of a show. The Head of Science has dedicated three decades to education and is now heading inexorably into the private sector. A tall man with large glasses, he is standing in the foyer next to the students with clipboards, waiting to greet people, a humourless grin on his face.

  ‘Yvonne…’ he says as I enter, and steps forward to kiss me on both cheeks.

  After a few pleasantries with the Head of Science, I walk down the corridor that leads to the Events Hall, the centre of the Dawson Complex. On the left, there is a row of newly assembled metal racks for people to hang up their coats. The racks are already full, just a few metal hangers left, squeezed together at the end with raffle tickets Sellotaped to them. I am standing on the edge of a group of people, waiting to hang up my coat, when a tall woman student dressed in a black shirt and black jeans comes along, holding a tray of wine glasses. ‘Dr Carmichael…’ she says, pausing to offer me the tray. I don’t recognise her and haven’t put on my name badge yet but she must be a former examinee of mine so I smile, take a glass, and say, ‘Oh, thanks, how are you doing?’

  ‘Great, I’m starting at the Vicenzi Centre in the fall.’

  Now I remember, a clever American, her PhD was on distinguishable personality traits resulting from conditional susceptibility due to the SERT gene variant. ‘That’s great, good luck.’

  ‘Thank you. I can’t wait.’

  Behind her, walking down the corridor, I see two bald men, one tall, one short. ‘Is that Professor Rochester?’ I ask, staring at the short one. The question is rhetorical as I’m sure it is. I take a sip of wine. It hits my empty stomach. Eli Rochester runs Glasgow. In my field, he is God. I glance at her. ‘Rochester is here…’

  The student leans in, raising an immaculately shaped eyebrow. I still can’t remember her name but recall now that I liked her a great deal, her sardonic intelligence. ‘Everyone is here, Dr Carmichael,’ she murmurs as she turns away.

  I edge towards the coat rack, unbuttoning my coat with my free hand as I do, and the man in front of me says in a familiar manner, as he turns, ‘Here, you’d better let me take that.’

  For a moment, I’m not sure what he means, then see he is looking at my wine glass. ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Yvonne,’ he says, a note of admonition in his voice as he takes my glass from me and stands waiting while I shrug off my coat and find a free wire hanger. ‘I edited your essay.’ Oh yes, he’s a science publisher. I’ve actually done quite a lot of work with him but it’s been mostly by email.

  ‘Harry!’ I say, ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good, good…’

  As Harry and I walk down the corridor together, I realise that something in me is alight this evening. It is strange the way this sort of narcissism attracts people. I wonder if it is down to the wine glass in my hand, or the number of people who have greeted me enthusiastically before I’m even in the door, or the presence of so many illustrious colleagues in my field – which, of course, flatters my decision to attend the party myself – yes, it is all those things. But it is also you. I have just done something that most people at this party would never dream of doing, that I myself would never have dreamt of doing before I met you. And I have done it without being caught, I have pulled it off. Later, I will be going home to the nice house I share with my husband and here I am at a party full of high-achievers in my field and, guess what, I’m one of them. This is my life. Five minutes ago, it seems to me, I was one of the students with a trayful of wine glasses, eager to exchange a few words with a professor in my field. And now here I am, as if by magic, and people are coming up to me and it’s taking me a minute or two to recall their names.

  I have finished my first glass of wine by the time I have got to the end of the corridor. I detach myself from Harry as I reach the Events Hall, which is heaving. It’s early but already there is an edgy feel to the event, people on their second or third glass, the laughter and chatter reaching to the high ceiling. Maybe it is the combination of the mundane setting with the volume of alcohol and attendees – it’s like an office Christmas party, everyone drunk or getting drunk, everyone networking. Scientists may not let their hair down often but when they do, they do it to the power of n.

  I spot a group of people I know, researchers from Guy’s old institute but I hang back for a minute, surveying the room. They will ask why Guy isn’t here – he’s giving a talk in Newcastle – and then they will ask how my job is going. I don’t want to get stuck with people I know too early.

  I edge my way around the room, depositing my empty glass and picking up a full one as I go, and suddenly find myself beside the illustrious Professor Rochester but he is surrounded by acolytes and looks deep in conversation with one of them. I move away, raising my glass to safety above people’s elbows, sliding sideways through bodies as I negotiate the room.

  ‘Yvonne!’ It’s Frances, a technician I’ve worked with at the Beaufort. I like her a lot. She’s in her sixties and there’s nothing she hasn’t seen.

  We embrace briefly. She leans in to hiss loudly in my ear, ‘How much do you reckon this has cost him?’

  I shout back in hers. ‘Thousands…’ In the current climate, the Head of Science would not have dared used a penny of University money.

  ‘C’mon,’ she says. ‘Let’s do a circuit of the room. Let’s see if we can track down the lesser-spotted canapé…’

  Two more glasses of wine go down my throat while we hunt. Surely there should be hordes of students with snacks? None are in sight, although occasionally, frustratingly, we glimpse people with something pinched between their fingers, raising it to their mouths. I have had nothing to eat since a sandwich at lunchtime and am already fuzzy-headed but, what the hell, everyone else in the room is clearly going that way too. It’s that kind of party. If necessary, I’ll drop forty quid on a cab to get home. I don’t have anything urgent tomorrow morning and I don’t mind paying fo
r an expensive black cab if it’s been a free night out.

  ‘Have you heard, there’s dancing later…?’ shouts Frances above the hubbub as we ease past a cluster of bacteriologists from Sweden. I know they are bacteriologists because they are shouting to each other furiously about the Meselson and Stahl experiments. Those experiments took place in 1958 and bacteriologists still argue about them. I think one of them might be someone I had a short-lived feud with on the letters page of Nature magazine a couple of years ago.

  ‘You have to be kidding…’ I murmur, but Frances doesn’t hear me as my words are drowned by the shrieking of a sound system from the side of the room. We grimace and turn. Then there is a phup-phup sound as someone on the raised dais at the end taps a microphone. God, the speeches, I think, tossing back my glass and looking around for a refill before they begin. The Head of Science rarely uses one word when twenty-eight will do.

  *

  Some time around 10 p.m., the evening becomes hazy. I look at my watch and think, I should call Guy and tell him I am going to be later than I said, then I remember he is in Newcastle. The party invitation said until midnight but I hadn’t imagined I would stay for the duration – now it’s looking as though I will be here till the bitter end. I feel bewildered with drink, sick and unsure – too drunk to drink but too drunk to stop. It’s ages since I’ve been this drunk. Years. I have fraternised with the research scientists and lost Frances somewhere along the way and even said a brief hello to Eli Rochester who, to my astonishment, remembered meeting me at the Advanced Bioinformatics Symposium in Chicago six years ago – and it comes to me with a sticky kind of suddenness as I stand there that my heels are higher than I am used to and I should really take my glass of wine outside, right now.