I was deep in thought when I narrowly avoided bumping into a man coming out from a block of mansion flats, a navy baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead. I mumbled an apology and for a moment our eyes met. We walked on our opposite ways, but I was sure I had seen him somewhere before. It was only as I tried to chase away the boredom of my three-mile walk on the treadmill that I realised that the man in the baseball cap was Barry Jones, hugely popular quiz-show host and the nation’s foremost family man. And if it wasn’t him, it was someone looking enough like him to be his twin.
A week later I saw him again, at almost exactly the same time, coming out from the block of flats, looking right and left under his blue cap before stepping out on to the pavement. I peered at him and before he had a chance to turn away I had established that it was definitely The Nation’s Favourite Husband.
‘Doesn’t Barry Jones live in St John’s Wood?’ I asked a colleague.
‘Yes, he does. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ I shrugged.
I could have set my watch by him. He popped out of the heavy oak door, like a cuckoo from a clock, albeit a silent, rather stealthy cuckoo, Wednesday and Friday, at 6 a.m. sharp, cap drawn low across his forehead.
‘He’s cheating on his wife,’ Arabella said when I told her. ‘No doubt about it.’
‘But this is Barry Jones we’re talking about,’ I protested. A man as famous for his perfect marriage to Tammy and their idyllic life with their three perfect, spotless children, as he is for his television work. A man who had been seen so many times with his arm draped around his wife’s shoulders that ungenerous minds had accused him of having had it surgically attached. A man who had had more things knitted for him by little old ladies than a royal baby. Barry Jones? Surely not!
‘Don’t be naïve.’ Arabella sighed.
‘But this is the man “Who Restored the Nation’s Faith in Marriage”.’
‘I think’, Arabella said, ‘that the operative word here is man. So are you going to do a piece on it?’
‘I don’t know. Probably not. I’m not in the business of wrecking people’s lives truffling around for scandal, real or imagined.’
‘Odd.’ Arabella shrugged. ‘I could have sworn you were a journalist.’
You get that sort of comment all the time when you work for a newspaper. I try to rise above it. ‘I’m a feature writer,’ I said. ‘Not a reporter.’ Then I threw a cushion at her. ‘I have my own rules and standards. All the same,’ I caught the cushion as she threw it back at me, ‘I suppose I should tip off the news desk. It’s my duty. And the man is a complete hypocrite. Anyone else and one might say it’s nobody’s business but his own, but this guy has made his name from being the perfect bloody husband.’
‘So tell the news desk.’
‘Do you think that Barry Jones is capable of cheating on his wife?’ I asked Audrey on my regular Saturday-afternoon visit. (My mother liked visits on a Saturday afternoon; nothing but sport on the television.)
‘Of course he is.’ She reached out for a second scone.
‘But Barry Jones. He represented The Cardigan for the association of English wool merchants last year.’
‘Clotted cream, darling? It’s delicious. Cornish.’
‘Have you heard from Dad?’
‘He called this morning, actually. He says he’s happy. Now try the strawberry jam; it’s to die for.’
Holden rolled his eyes. We were having dinner at this new Indian restaurant and for a moment I thought the spices had got to him, but then he said, ‘Are you planning to start some kind of witch-hunt against this Barry Jones character? You know my opinion on that aspect of your career?’
‘I’ve told you hundreds of times,’ I protested. ‘I am not an investigative reporter, I’m a feature writer. I don’t snoop, well not much, nor am I interested in exposing the duplicitous love life of Barry Jones, but I should pass the information on to the news desk. That’s my duty to my colleagues. In fact, it’s my duty as a journalist.’ Holden was shaking his head and muttering something about gutters, but I ignored him. ‘If he’s not up to something,’ I said, ‘then no harm will be done, but if he is cheating, well, then he’s the biggest hypocrite in a decade of hypocrites and I don’t see why he should get away with it. He isn’t just any old bloke. What we’ve got here is a man who’s made his name and his living from this whiter-than-white image. And, in his time, he’s not been averse to pronouncing on the frailties of others. This guy has his own Christmas broadcast, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Well, it’s your decision, Esther.’ Holden helped himself to some more Basmati rice. ‘I’m just afraid I don’t share your fascination with the sordid details of other people’s lives.’
Why did he love me when I was so full of faults? Pondering about whether and why he loved me tended to stop me from worrying whether or not I really loved him. Holden put his hand over mine and smiled into my eyes. ‘You look lovely when you’re puzzled.’
I was pleased about that, seeing I spent most of my life wondering what the hell was going on. Maybe that was what attracted me to men like Donald and Holden; men to whom doubts rated somewhere down there with quiche. ‘Do you like quiche?’ I asked him.
Holden looked surprised at the question, but then he smiled. ‘Real men don’t eat quiche, isn’t that what they say?’
I thought as much. I returned to the subject of Barry Jones. ‘I really care about getting this right,’ I said. ‘Not only for Barry Jones and his family’s sake. I set myself some pretty strict rules of behaviour. You have to or you open the door to chaos.’
‘Maybe you’re a little bit obsessive about it. All those lists. Like today. I like Indian food, it’s not that, but to be coming here because one of your lists said you couldn’t go to an Italian restaurant again until you’d been to an Indian one seems, well, a bit odd.’
‘Do you know the origin of the word obsessive?’ I asked him. Holden shook his head. ‘It means battlement, barrier. In medieval times being possessed was a serious problem. It was very much a matter for the stake. But if you were obsessed, then you were highly respected because, far from having allowed the devil to get into you, you were busy erecting barriers: obsessions. So if I seem a bit obsessive at times it’s simply because I’m putting up barricades against the devil called chaos.’ I sat back, feeling that I had explained myself rather well.
‘If you hadn’t noticed, we’ve progressed a bit since the Middle Ages. And anyway, what does that have to do with whether or not you eat at an Italian or Indian restaurant? You know, I used to think you were really together.’
‘I am, I am. And that’s all because of my systems. A lot of people say things like, I really should try and eat something other than Italian, or Thai or whatever it is they’re always eating, then they still go back to the same old place they always go to, because it’s convenient or whatever. But when I say something like that to myself, I set it into system. I don’t leave things to chance or whim.’
The next day was a Wednesday. I was running a few minutes late when I spotted Barry Jones already halfway up the street. As he hurried along I noticed a burly man in his mid-twenties following him. Photographer? But I saw no camera. Reporter? Private detective? I guessed as I walked along. The burly man caught up with Barry Jones and… oh my God! Mugger! In seconds, Barry Jones lay sprawled across the pavement deprived of his shoulder-bag, then almost nonchalantly the attacker aimed a kick at his victim’s head. ‘Stop it!’ I screamed, running towards them. ‘Stop that!’ The man turned round and stared at me, and then, not even bothering to run, he was off.
I knelt on the ground by Barry Jones’s side. Cars drove by and if their drivers and passengers noticed anything they showed no signs of stopping. There were no other pedestrians in sight. ‘Someone call the police,’ I yelled up at the windows of the apartment blocks. ‘Call an ambulance, please.’ Barry Jones opened his eyes wide and let out a groan. ‘It’s all right,’ I assured him. ‘I won’t leave.�
� He tried to speak. ‘What was that?’ I leant closer, my ear almost touching his lips. I hastily grabbed hold of my hair to stop it falling into his face. ‘Can you try to speak again?’
‘Go away. I want to be left alone.’
I sat back up. ‘But you need medical attention,’ I told him.
Above our heads a first-floor window was flung open and a woman’s head covered in pink curlers popped out. ‘Did you say call the police?’ she yelled.
‘Please! And an ambulance!’ The woman’s head disappeared back inside. Was it my imagination or was there a shadowy figure behind the lace curtain of the window next to hers?
‘You don’t understand.’ Although his voice was unsteady, Barry Jones managed to raise it. ‘I don’t want anyone. Just help me to my feet.’
But within minutes the ambulance and the police arrived. I gave a description of the attacker, as best I could, having explained that I had been some distance away.
‘You’re very observant, miss,’ the constable said.
I smiled modestly. ‘Oh, it’s my training. I’m a journalist.’ An anguished cry from Barry Jones being carried past on a stretcher made me turn round. I watched as he was manoeuvred into the back of the ambulance. ‘Can’t they give him something?’ I asked the officer. ‘The poor man is obviously in great pain.’
I was asked to step into the police car. ‘It’s common procedure, miss, if you don’t mind. We’re instituting a search of the area and would be much obliged if you could accompany us for identification purposes.’
I got into the back of the car. ‘You mean you want me to go along with you to see if I can spot the attacker?’
‘That’s what I said, miss.’ Off we drove through the nearby streets.
There were still very few people on the pavements, but the road was getting busy with traffic. ‘There,’ I shouted suddenly as I spotted a lone figure by the window of a computer hardware shop. The car screeched to a halt and a dog, out on his own, his leg lifted against a rubbish bin, leapt with fright and ran off in mid-stream, leaving a trail of pee on the pavement. The man by the shop window turned round. ‘No. No, sorry, mistake,’ I said just as the two policemen were about to leap from the car.
We drove on. Half an hour later we gave up the search. ‘Sometimes we get them; it’s amazing how many of them hang around the area of the crime,’ the constable said as they dropped me off at the house after a brief stop at the police station where I signed my statement. ‘We’ll be in touch if we get him.’
The news of how ‘Barry Jones got Brutally Mugged on Quiet London Street’, would be out instantly and then it would be a matter of time before the story, if there was one, of his infidelity broke. I couldn’t justify not alerting my own paper.
The next morning the Chronicle sported the headline, SECRET THRUSTS OF NATION’S FAVOURITE HUSBAND END IN BRUTAL WEST END MUGGING. Underneath was a photograph of Barry Jones leaving hospital, his face bruised and his arm in a sling.
I stayed late at the office, working through the notes for a series of articles I was planning under the heading of ‘Passionate Lives’. The idea was to explore the engine in people’s lives, and also what happened if there was no engine. As I was preparing to leave, Lennie, the office junior, came in with the hot-off-the-presses edition for the next day. MEET THE OTHER WOMAN IN BARRY JONES LOVE TRIANGLE! (Turn to page five.)
I did. Our reporters had found out that the woman with whom Barry Jones had spent the night before the mugging was a Ms Virginia Kitchener, a divorced mother of three. There was a picture of her in one of the tabloids, eyes staring, chin sagging in surprise, trying in vain to shield her face from the camera. Next to it was a photo of Barry Jones’s wife, looking immaculate and beautiful in a touchingly fragile way. I have nothing to say, dignified Mrs Jones announced. But I’ve brought you all some tea. You must be getting cold out there.
What a woman!
‘You landed that guy well and truly in it,’ Holden said at dinner that evening. We were sitting in my little kitchen finishing the goulash I had prepared. Holden had stated it was far too warm an evening for goulash, but he still ate it all.
‘What do you mean, I landed him in it?’ I knew precisely what he meant, having thought the very same thing myself, but that didn’t mean I was ready to accept it from someone else. ‘He landed himself in it by being a cheating hypocrite. If I hadn’t told them, another paper would have had the story all the same. I was doing my job.’
Holden sat back in the chair and stretching out his legs in front of him he smiled an infuriating little smile and shook his head. I wanted suddenly to slap him right across his ironic expression.
‘Anyway, why should you care?’ I asked. ‘The guy is a sleaze ball.’
‘So stop moping and come and give me a kiss.’
I was torn between needing approval and wanting to tell him to piss off.
Piss off won.
Holden stood up, scraping the chair back on the stone floor. ‘Don’t be vulgar. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ He marched out of the kitchen and a few seconds later I heard the front door slam shut.
Five minutes later he was back. ‘I forgive you.’ He grinned as he sat back at the table and picked up his knife and fork.
‘Are you in love with me?’ I asked him. ‘I mean really, passionately?’ I asked because if he was, I wanted to know what it felt like. I could feign in love for long enough to fool most men and even myself for a while. I lusted with the best of them, but deep down below the layers of pretence that constitute one’s character I knew that at the age of thirty-two I had never really been in love (that’s not counting Pigotty).
‘Don’t start.’ Holden sighed the sigh of male martyrdom. Most men were like that in my experience; treating any conversation threatening to become emotional as if it were a dog with unfortunate personal habits that insisted on curling up at their feet. They’d brush it off with an embarrassed laugh or a frown, or ignore it in the hope that it would slink quietly away. Holden was no exception. Then I thought, why should he be? That was one of the troubles with relationships these days; we expected each other to be the exception. I mean, when a woman referred to her husband as ‘a typical man’, it was not usually meant as a compliment. And how many times have you heard the phrase ‘That’s so like a woman’ said in a tone of awed respect?
‘If you wrote a list of all the things about me that irritated you most,’ I said, ‘I bet it would go something like this: “She talks at breakfast. Reads bits aloud from the papers. Fiddles with my hair when I’m trying to watch sport. Says, ‘You don’t like it, do you?’ every time she wears something new. Talks about problems even when there’s nothing one can do about them. Talks about feelings. Uses the word Relationship as an offensive weapon.” Shall I go on?’
Holden gave me a long look. ‘So if you know these things get on my tits, why do you do it?’
That was a fair question, but I had to think about it for a moment. ‘Because’, I said at last, ‘I think doing all those things is utterly reasonable. I suppose that’s why I feel such despair for the future of heterosexual relationships.’
Linus left Katya’s flat, stepping straight out into the pouring rain, barely noticing the water running down the back of his open-necked shirt. ‘What have I done?’ he mumbled as he walked off towards the office, but the words ended up more triumphant than remorseful. He tried again. ‘Oh God, what have I done?’ But it sounded more like a moan of pleasure. He could not stop thinking of how Katya’s thighs felt encircling his hips and of the expression of surprised delight in her eyes as they made love. She had looked as if she had been given a present she had spent years yearning for. Not like Lotten, who looked more like someone dispensing a favour with varying degrees of reluctance. ‘Oh Lotten,’ he groaned. ‘What have I done to you?’ But all he felt was the warmth of being wanted. As the afternoon went on his remorse became more real, helped by the images he conjured up of his wife, his helpmate, the mother of his son. ‘What have I do
ne?’ And this time the words carried genuine pain. It was late afternoon before he got down to some real work, but then, as always, it absorbed him. He paused briefly only to observe to himself that he was a monster, a cold-hearted, amoral bastard, before bending down once more towards the drawings in front of him.
The sitting-room window of the flat was lit up and Lotten had not yet drawn the blinds. He could see the familiar outline of the reading lamp with its green shade by the armchair and a hazy display of books at the back of the room. The flat was on the second floor of the yellow-brick forties block, above an undistinguished lobby with an efficient lift and a sensibly proportioned stairwell. He and Lotten had lived there since the year before Ivar’s birth and in spite of Lotten’s talk of moving out of the city they remained. Lotten accused him of being passive to the point of inertia when it came to all things domestic and practical. She was probably right. As he walked up the stairs to flat five, he resolved to make amends. If Lotten wanted to move out of the city, that’s what they would do. He would design the house himself, the way she had always wanted. By the time he turned the key in the lock he had almost come to believe that his infidelity would turn out to be a godsend for him and Lotten both.
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