Damage

by Josephine Hart

  I could not pinpoint what damage, or whether I would recover, or how long it would take. Suffice to know that I was less the man I had been, and more myself … a new strange self.

  I was now a liar to my family. A woman I had known only for days, to whom I had spoken only a few sentences, watched me betray my wife and my son. And we both knew the other knew. It seemed a bond between us. A concealed truth, that’s all a lie is.

  Either by omission or commission we never do more than obscure. The truth stays in the undergrowth, waiting to be discovered. But nothing was uncovered that Sunday. The small lie, which was the first betrayal, seemed to sink further and further in the laughter, the wine, and the day.

  ‘Well, what do you think of her?’ Ingrid asked me after they left.

  ‘Of Anna?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘She’s strange.’

  ‘Yes, you can see why I’m worried. Martyn’s completely out of his depth. It’s not just that she’s older … there’s something else. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but she’s wrong for him. Not that he can see it, of course. He is obviously besotted. Sex, I suppose.’

  I froze.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Come on, of course she’s sleeping with him. My God, Martyn’s had more women than …’

  ‘Than me.’

  ‘I should hope so too,’ said Ingrid as she came to put her arms around me. But the conversation had devastated me. I kissed her gently, and went to my study.

  I stood looking out of the window into the evening light. Anna was now in my home. She was flitting between rooms, between Ingrid and Martyn and me. Yet nothing had happened, nothing at all. Except, of course, her discovered presence in this world.

  She was the split-second experience that changes everything; the car smash; the letter we shouldn’t have opened; the lump in the breast or groin; the blinding flash. On my well-ordered stage-set the lights were up, and maybe at last I was waiting in the wings.

  NINE

  ‘MARTYN IS COMING over for lunch again on Sunday. I think he’s got something to tell us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I hope it’s not that he is going to marry Anna, but I fear that it is.’

  ‘Marry her?’

  ‘Yes. There was something in his voice. Oh, I don’t know. I may be wrong.’

  ‘He can’t marry her.’ Why do those we have loved half our lives not know when devastation threatens? How can they simply not know?

  ‘Good God, you sound like a Victorian father. He’s over twenty-one. He can do what he likes. I don’t like that girl. But I know Martyn. If he wants her, he will have her. He’s got your father’s determination.’

  I noticed she did not say mine.

  ‘Well, we must all wait until Sunday,’ she sighed.

  The conversation was over. My thoughts went wildly into battle with each other. I was wounded, defended myself, and fought myself again. Silently, while I pretended to read, on and on the battle raged. I was engulfed by anger and fear. Fear that I would never get control of myself again. That I was now uprooted. And by a storm of such force that even if there was a dim possibility of survival, I would be permanently damaged, permanently weakened.

  I had not spoken. I had not touched. I had not possessed. But I had recognised her. And in her, had recognised myself.

  I needed to get out of the house and walk. The forced stillness of the room was agony. The pain could only be borne by constant, endless movement.

  I touched Ingrid’s forehead briefly, and I left the house. How can you not know? Can’t you sense, smell, taste disaster waiting in the corners of the house? Waiting at the bottom of the garden.

  I was exhausted when I returned. I slept like some heavy animal, uncertain if it can ever rise again.

  TEN

  ‘HELLO, IT’S ANNA.’

  I waited quietly. Knowing that in my life there was now an end and a beginning. Not knowing where the beginning would end.

  ‘Where are you? Go to your house. I will be there in an hour,’ I said. I took the address and put down the phone.

  There are hidden enclaves in London of creamy houses, rich with discretion. In the deep oily blackness of the door I watched the outline of my body as I pressed the bell, and waited to enter Anna’s small, low and to me mysterious house.

  We made no sound as we moved down the honey-coloured carpet of the hall. We went into her sitting-room and lay down on the floor. She flung her arms out, each side of her, and she drew her legs up. I lay down on her. I sank my head on her shoulder. I thought of Christ, still nailed to the cross, which had been laid on the earth. Then with one hand grasping her hair, I entered her.

  And there we lay. Not speaking, not stirring until finally I moved my face across hers, and kissed her. And at last the age-old ritual possessed us, and I bit and tore and held her, round and round, as we rose and fell, rose and fell into the wilderness.

  Later there would be time for the pain and pleasure lust lends to love. Time for body lines and angles that provoke the astounded primitive to leap delighted from the civilised skin, and tear the woman to him. There would be time for words obscene and dangerous. There would be time for cruel laughter to excite, and for ribbons colourfully to bind limbs to a sickening, thrilling subjugation. There would be time for flowers to put out the eyes, and for silken softness to close the ears. And time also in that dark and silent world for the howl of the lonely man, who had feared eternal exile.

  Even if we had never come together again, my life would have been lost in contemplation of the emerging skeleton beneath my skin. It was as though a man’s bones broke through the face of the werewolf. Shining with humanity he stalked through his midnight life towards the first day.

  We bathed separately. I left alone, without speaking. I walked the long walk home. I stared at Ingrid as she came to greet me and muttered something about needing to rest for a few hours. I undressed and lay on the bed, and was instantly asleep. I slept through until morning, twelve hours, a kind of death perhaps.

  ELEVEN

  ‘LAMB OR BEEF?’ asked Ingrid.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lamb or beef? Sunday lunch, Martyn and Anna.’

  ‘Oh. Whatever you think.’

  ‘Lamb then. Good, that’s settled.’

  Anna wore white at lunch. It made her appear larger. The suggested innocence of the simple white dress disturbed my other vision of her. It broke my memory of her dark power. She was her other self; the self that dealt carefully with Ingrid, winning at least a grudging respect from her; that gazed openly at Martyn; that calmly spoke to me of food, flowers, and weather; spoke so well, that none could have guessed the truth.

  If Ingrid had expected an announcement, there was none forthcoming. They left at four, having refused tea.

  ‘Martyn seemed tense, I thought.’ Ingrid had begun the ritual post-mortem.

  ‘Really. I didn’t notice.’

  ‘No? Well, he did. He looks at her in a slightly pleading fashion. No doubt who’s the lover and the loved there. She seemed a bit less strange. More open, more friendly. Could have been the white dress, I suppose. White always disarms one.’

  Clever Ingrid, I thought, how you can surprise me.

  ‘Maybe it will all peter out. Oh God, I do hope so. I really couldn’t bear the idea of Anna as a daughter-in-law. Could you?’

  I paused. The idea seemed too preposterous. An alien concept outside the bounds of possibility. But the question demanded an answer.

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ I said. We left it there.

  TWELVE

  I BATHED ANNA’S FACE, which was raw and damp, and squeezing the sponge let the water run through her hair. For hours, we had fought a battle with the barricades of the body. The battle over, I lay beside her.

  ‘Anna, please … talk to me … who are you?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘I am what you desire,’ she said.

  ‘No. That’s not what I meant.’
/>
  ‘No? But to you, that’s what I am. To others I am something else.’

  ‘Others? Something else?’

  ‘Martyn. My mother, my father.’ A long pause. ‘My family. Friends of my past, my present. It’s the same for everyone. For you as well.’

  ‘Does Martyn know more? Has he met your parents, your family?’

  ‘No. He asked once. I told him to love me as though he knew me. And if he could not — well then …’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Do you have to ask? Oh well, it’s simple. My mother’s name is Elizabeth Hunter. She is the second wife of Wilbur Hunter, the writer. She lives happily with Wilbur on the West Coast of America. I haven’t seen her for two years. This causes me no pain, nor, I believe, does it distress her. We write occasionally. I phone at Christmas, Easter and birthdays. My father was a diplomat. I travelled a great deal as a child. I went to school in Sussex, spent my holidays anywhere and everywhere. I was not upset when my parents divorced. My father, though apparently distressed at the time of my mother’s affair with Wilbur, recovered sufficiently to marry a 35—year-old widow with two children. They have since produced a daughter, Amelia. I visit them occasionally in Devon.’

  ‘Were you an only child?’

  ‘No.’

  I waited.

  ‘I had a brother. Aston. He committed suicide by slashing his wrists and throat in the bathroom of our apartment in Rome. No chance of misinterpretation. It was not a cry for help. No one knew why at the time. I shall tell you. He suffered from an unrequited love of me. I tried to soothe him with my body …’ she paused, then continued in staccato, ‘his pain, my foolishness … our confusion … He killed himself. Understandably. That is my story, simply told. Please do not ask again. I have told you in order to issue a warning. I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.’

  For a long time we were silent.

  ‘Why did you say “understandably” Aston killed himself?’

  ‘Because I understand. I carry that knowledge within me. It is not a treasure that I jealously guard. Simply a story I did not wish to tell, about a boy you have never known.’

  ‘That makes you dangerous?’

  ‘All damaged people are dangerous. Survival makes them so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they have no pity. They know that others can survive, as they did.’

  ‘But you have warned me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was that not an act of pity?’

  ‘No. You have gone so far down the road that all warnings are now useless. I will feel better for having told you. Though the timing is wrong.’

  ‘And Martyn?’

  ‘Martyn does not need a warning.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Martyn asks no questions. He is content with me. He allows me my secrets.’

  ‘And if he found out the truth?’

  ‘What truth?’

  ‘You and I.’

  ‘That truth. There are other truths.’

  ‘You seem to ascribe to Martyn qualities of self-sufficiency and maturity I have not noticed.’

  ‘No. You haven’t noticed.’

  ‘And if you are wrong about him?’

  ‘That would be a tragedy.’

  Of her body I have little to say. It was simply essential. I could not bear the absence of it. Pleasure was an incidental. I threw myself on her, as on to the earth. I forced all parts of her to feed my need and watched her grow larger and more powerful, the more she provided. Hungry, I would hold her at a distance by hair or breast, sick with anger that I could have what I wanted.

  And round every meeting with her spun a ribbon of certainty that my life had already ended. It had ended in the split second of my first sight of her.

  It was time out of life. Like an acid it ran through all the years behind me, burning and destroying.

  THIRTEEN

  I HAD OPENED A DOOR to a secret vault. Its treasures were immense. Its price would be terrible. I knew that all the defences I had built so carefully — wife, children, home, vocation — were ramparts built on sand. With no knowledge of any other path I had made my journey through the years, seeking and clinging to landmarks of normality.

  Did I always know of this secret room? Was my sin basically one of untruthfulness? Or, more likely, one of cowardice? But the liar knows the truth. The coward knows his fear and runs away.

  And if I had not met Anna? Ah, what providence for those who suffered such devastation at my hand!

  But I did meet Anna. And I had to, and I did open the door, and enter my own secret vault. I wanted my time on earth, now that I had heard the song that sings from head to toe; and known the wildness that whirls the dancers past the gaze of shocked onlookers; had fallen deeper and deeper and had soared higher and higher, into a single reality — the dazzling explosion into self.

  What lies are impossible? What trust is so precious? What responsibility is so great that it could deny this single chance in eternity to exist? Alas for me, and for all who knew me, the answer was … none.

  To be brought into being by another, as I was by Anna, leads to strange, unthought-of needs. Breathing became more difficult without her. I literally felt I was being born. And because birth is always violent, I never looked for, nor ever found, gentleness.

  The outer reaches of our being are arrived at through violence. Pain turns into ecstasy. A glance turns into a threat. A challenge deep behind the eye or mouth, that only Anna or I could understand, led us on and on, intoxicated by the power to create our own magnificent universe.

  She never cried out. Patiently she suffered the slow torments of my adoration. Sometimes, her limbs locked, impossibly angled, as on a rack of my imagination, stoically she bore my weight. Dark-eyed, mother-like, the timeless creator of the thing that hurt her.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘I MAY HAVE TO go to Brussels on Friday.’ Ingrid and I were having a pre-dinner drink in the drawing-room.

  ‘Oh, no! Why? I hoped we could go to Hartley to see Father. I felt like a nice peaceful weekend in the country. I thought you might have been able to come up, on Sunday at least.’ Ingrid sounded pained.

  ‘I’m sorry, really sorry. I’d have liked to go to Hartley. But there’s an absolutely key meeting I’ve got to get to. And while I’m there, George Broughton has arranged two lunches. And a dinner. With our Dutch counterparts. You go to Hartley. You and Edward always have such a nice time together. I don’t know of a father and daughter who are closer.’

  Ingrid laughed. She and Edward really did have the most extraordinary ease with each other. I often felt like an outsider. And Hartley was beautiful. Edward had bought it early in his career and taken his young bride to live there.

  ‘I’ll ask Sally if she can come.’

  ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘Maybe she can bring this new boyfriend. I don’t know if it’s serious. He’s quite a nice chap. Nick Robinson’s son.’

  ‘How did she meet him?’

  ‘He’s an assistant producer at the television company.’ Sally had recently left publishing to work in television.

  ‘Well, Nick’s a gentleman. Ask Sally and her chap. You’ll all have a wonderful time.’

  ‘Martyn is going to Paris, of course, with Anna. God, that’s looking more and more serious.’

  My back was to her.

  ‘Where are they staying?’

  ‘Oh, at some place Anna knows. Frightfully expensive and very trendy, I gather. L’Hôtel. Yes, I think that’s what it’s called.’

  I drank my whisky. So easy, so easy. Anna had refused to tell me. I hadn’t spoken to Martyn for a week.

  ‘Anna has money, you know.’ Ingrid spoke disapprovingly.

  ‘Has she?’

  ‘It’s quite a lot evidently. Left to her by her grandfather, I gather. That’s how she can afford that mews house she lives in, and her very expensive car.’

  ‘Well, Mart
yn’s not exactly penniless. And he’s got the trust fund set up by my father and Edward.’

  ‘Yes I know. But Anna’s the kind of girl who would have been better off without money.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Money does things to a woman.’

  ‘Really. What? And don’t forget you had a lot of money when we married.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m not Anna. Whatever people say nowadays, marriage requires a woman to at least act out a certain kind of dependence. Money is sometimes the currency of that dependence. In a subtle woman, her economic independence is shaded, possibly hidden altogether.’ She had the grace to laugh. ‘Seriously, that girl has a fierce nature.’

  ‘I don’t know why we keep calling her a girl. She’s a woman over thirty.’

  ‘Yes. And she looks it. She is very sophisticated, confident. But there is something of the girl, something girlish, still there.’

  ‘She seems to fascinate you,’ I said.

  Ingrid looked at me.

  ‘Not you? Doesn’t she fascinate you? She suddenly arrives in Martyn’s life. Over thirty, unmarried – as far as we know – rich, sophisticated and she has an affair with Martyn. After a relationship of only three to four months Martyn is thinking of marriage. Martyn! Martyn the Lothario!’

  ‘You’ve said that before. I see no signs of it. I’m sure this affair will be like all of the others. One Sunday he will turn up for lunch with another blonde. Come to think of it, before Anna they were all blondes.’ Anger and fear distorted my voice. Though I tried to sit quietly I had to move towards the window.

  ‘You are blind. For an intelligent man.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Even occasionally a brilliant man.’

  ‘Oh, thank you again, madam.’

  Ingrid laughed.

  ‘You never see what’s in front of you. Martyn’s sweet racy days with the blondes are over. For all his experience, he has been stunned by this girl. He certainly means to marry her. I’m positive of that. What her intentions are, well, they are as much of a mystery as everything else about her.’