Sam was in my mind and I loathed him. I wanted harm to come to him, and I couldn’t recall ever wishing harm on anyone before. He was a liar and I was a better person than him, and I would prove to myself that I was a better person than him by telling the truth. The moment had come: it was like seeing a huge wave rearing over you, and turning into it in the hope that it will carry you back to the shore instead of pushing you under. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I knew her.’
‘This is a euphemism, yes? You had sex with her.’
‘I did,’ I said. ‘Once or twice.’
Disregarding the qualifying phrase, Aileen picked up the note again and scanned it. ‘Born 1981,’ she read out. ‘So we were living in Chatham Road and you were seeing this Williams woman.’
‘Yes. But not when he thinks I was. The dates don’t match.’
‘At the moment that’s not quite the issue, Dominic. The issue isn’t his perception of events – it’s mine. We were living in Chatham Road and you were seeing this woman, correct?’
‘Well—’ I began, and never did a single syllable sound so pusillanimous.
‘Who was she?’
‘She was somebody I met.’
‘That goes without saying, doesn’t it? Where did you meet her?’
‘She was a customer.’
‘What age?’
‘Mid-twenties.’
‘OK. Good-looking as well? Charming? Witty? Intelligent?’
‘Not especially.’
‘Not especially what? Not especially intelligent? I assume she pleased the eye. They generally do.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You suppose? Suppose? You were there. At very close quarters. Tell me.’
‘She must have been attractive, yes,’ I said.
‘Don’t be coy, Dominic,’ said Aileen. The tone was like that of a therapist talking to someone many years her junior, but in her smile there was, I thought, a hint of pity – perhaps for me, perhaps for both of us. ‘Tell me more,’ she went on. ‘I’m intrigued. This Sarah must have been quite a girl. We’re talking about 1980. We’d have been, what – four years in? A bit ahead of schedule for a seven-year itch. So what was she like? Tell me. I’d like to know. Really, I would.’
‘Aileen,’ I said. ‘There’s no point in this. It was years and years ago. I can barely remember her.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘It’s true. I can’t remember her clearly. It’s so far in the past, and—’
‘Not to me she isn’t. Until this afternoon I’d never heard of her, and now she’s here. She’s the present, as far as I’m concerned. She’s the foreground. Very much so. And I want to know why you did it.’ Getting no immediate answer, she tried to help me out. ‘Was it my fault? It’s usually the woman’s fault when the man has an affair, I know.’
‘It wasn’t an affair.’
‘What word would you prefer?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘In that case we’ll stick with “affair”,’ she said, briskly. ‘Now, the explanation. I thought I was being supportive. I know you had a tough time, but it was tough for both of us. I was involved, and I thought I was doing my bit. I thought I was helping. The worst came later, as I recall. Before London we had the odd bit of friction, but nothing out of the ordinary, I’d say. We were getting along fine, weren’t we? So I’m at a loss here. Wasn’t I supportive? Did I do something wrong? Do feel free to interject at any time.’
‘Of course you were supportive.’
‘But not enough. You needed a bit more.’
‘It wasn’t you. You couldn’t have been better.’
‘The evidence seems to indicate that I could. In some way I fell short.’
‘No. It wasn’t that at all.’
‘So what was it, then? She was irresistible. That must be it. You couldn’t resist. But if she was that lovely,’ she said, cocking her head to one side as the contradiction occurred to her, ‘you wouldn’t have forgotten her, would you? Or maybe you haven’t forgotten her and you think you’re sparing my feelings by making out that you have. So tell me – she was a stunner, wasn’t she?’
‘I’ve told you. I can’t say.’
‘Oh come on, Dominic. Don’t be bashful. Out with it,’ she coaxed, banteringly, as if I were a brother rather than her husband.
‘I can’t remember, Aileen. I can’t remember. Really I can’t. And it doesn’t matter.’
‘It does to me.’
‘What matters is now – you and me. And right now I don’t know that I can do anything except say I’m sorry. It was idiotic of me and I can’t explain it. But it was so long ago. I’m not saying we forget it, or try to – I’m not saying that. We can’t – I know that. It was a mistake, a terrible mistake, and I don’t know why it happened. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say,’ I blathered. ‘But I can’t tell you why it happened. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you knew what you were doing. You were having sex.’
‘And that’s all it was. It wasn’t an affair. A few minutes of lunacy, that’s all.’
‘Sex is quite significant, I’d say. It tends to mean something if human beings are involved.’
‘This didn’t.’
‘It certainly means something now.’
‘More than it did at the time, I’d say.’
Looking down at the floor, she shook her head slowly and sighed, as if I’d wearied her by my inability to comprehend a very simple idea. ‘Dominic,’ she resumed, ‘before you met me, you’d had two girlfriends, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Two proper relationships.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And apart from those two, how many other girls had you been to bed with?’
‘None.’
‘Are you sure about that? Now’s the time to own up. Might as well clear the decks.’
‘I’m sure. Just two.’
‘Right. That’s what I thought. From this we can conclude that one-night stands were never your style. You were not a boy who had sex for the sake of it. With you it was always serious.’
‘But in this case it wasn’t. Really it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what I can tell you. It happened, but it wasn’t me. I wasn’t myself.’
‘And who might you have been, then?’ she asked. ‘The crown prince of Nepal?’ The jibe was delivered with an expressionless face, but in a voice that had a punch of bitterness. ‘Anyway,’ she resumed, ‘this young man – you say he’s not yours. Are you certain of that?’
‘One hundred per cent. The dates don’t tally. He was born too late.’
‘Well, there’s a fair amount of leeway when it comes to dates.’
‘They don’t work, believe me.’
‘Believing you isn’t quite as straightforward a business as it used to be.’
‘The dates are medically impossible.’
‘You told him this, I assume?’
‘I did, but that wasn’t enough for him. So I arranged to have a DNA test, to prove it, to put an end to it. But he didn’t turn up. Which tells you—’
‘And when was this?’
‘Weeks ago.’
‘Four weeks, fourteen weeks?’
‘Not long after the show. Round about that time.’
‘My God,’ she murmured, ‘what a rich and varied life you’ve been leading.’ I started to apologise again; she interrupted with: ‘So why the note, all of a sudden?’
‘Like I said, he’s not right in the head,’ I answered. Then I added: ‘He was a very strange young man.’
For thirty seconds or so she rubbed at her temples, and then her expression began to change. She was gazing across the room at the window, her face slack and her eyes wide, as if she’d just seen someone do something idiotically dangerous and come through it unscathed, and now that the danger was past, it was the idiocy of what this person had done that was making her wonder. ‘My God,’ she whispered, ‘it was hi
m. It was him, wasn’t it? This note – it was him.’
I couldn’t say anything.
‘Sam Hendy,’ she said. ‘That’s who wrote this.’ A full minute passed before she could look at me. Tears were coming, but her eyes were incensed, not sorrowful. ‘You had him here, in this house—’
‘I didn’t have him here. He arrived. He conned his way in.’
‘You had him here, in our house, and all this was going on, and you didn’t say a word?’
‘I couldn’t say anything.’
‘There was this game going on—’
‘It wasn’t a game for me, I—’
‘Whatever you want to call it. This thing was happening, and I was in the centre of it, and I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on. You’ve been carrying on this performance; you’ve been lying to me, day in, day out; and I didn’t have a clue. It’s unbelievable. Can’t you comprehend how this makes me feel?’
‘Yes, I can. Of course.’
‘I’m not sure you can, Dominic. I really am not sure you can. You’ve humiliated me. You’ve treated me with contempt.’
‘No,’ I began, ‘that’s not—’
‘What were you thinking? What on earth were you thinking?’
‘I was trying to get rid of him. I thought it best that you didn’t know who he was. That was wrong, I see that, but it’s what I thought.’
‘And what the hell was he thinking? What was he doing here?’
‘First and foremost, he was making me squirm. It gave him pleasure to make me squirm. But I think he liked being here as well. He wanted to be part of this kind of life. And he liked you.’
Aileen, now drying her eyes with a tissue, laughed sharply. ‘That’s nice to know,’ she said. ‘That makes things a lot better. He liked me. Great.’
‘But he did like you. He liked talking to you. He liked you a lot more than he liked me. That’s why I’m shocked that he’s done this.’
‘It must be quite a blow for you,’ she muttered, then there was a long silence before she said: ‘I don’t understand it.’
‘Neither do I,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know what was going on in his head. You said yourself there was something wrong with him. But maybe—’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said, in a tone that stopped me. She was examining the carpet as if searching through images of all the days that Sam had been in the house. After a while she began to shake her head slowly. ‘I don’t know how you could have done it,’ she said. ‘I simply cannot understand.’
‘I felt trapped,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’
She considered my face, withholding empathy from the fool that was her husband. All she said, in a sigh, was: ‘God Almighty, Dominic.’
I asked her: ‘What do you want to do?’
‘I want to wake up and find that none of this has happened,’ she said, giving me a look in which there was no anger – just immeasurable disappointment. ‘I don’t know what I want to do,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know,’ I said.
‘I’ve heard enough, Dominic. Enough for now. The details can wait, thanks all the same.’ She stood up, and patted her chest lightly as she drew three or four quick little breaths, as you might do if you were settling yourself after coming close to being clipped by a car. ‘Any other offences to be taken into consideration?’ she asked. ‘Any other meaningless girlfriends lurking in your past?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘I can’t see there’s any “of course” about it.’
‘No,’ I told her again, ‘there aren’t any.’
She passed the note to me, holding it between thumb and forefinger as if disposing of a soiled tissue. ‘Will we be hearing more from this character, do you think?’ she said. ‘What’s your hunch?’
‘He’s done all the damage he can.’
‘I hope that’s true.’
‘It is,’ I assured her. ‘He can’t do anything more. And he’s gone. He’s not around any more. His phone is dead; he’s left where he was living; he’s gone.’
‘You knew where he lived?’
‘Yes.’
‘The surprises just keep on coming,’ she said, exhaustedly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, and she nodded. She looked me in the eyes, seeming to search for an explanation as to why this man could have betrayed her; not a trace of an explanation could be found, though, because the man who’d betrayed her wasn’t there any more.
‘I need to think, Dominic,’ she said, rubbing her eyes. ‘I really need to think.’
18
Aileen and I were a close couple for more than thirty years, and in all that time I saw her lose her temper three or four times at most. Even now, having found out about Sarah, she barely raised her voice at me. For several days she barely spoke to me at all. She simply got on with things, and stayed out of my way as much as possible. We ate separately; if I were watching TV, she would find other things to do. The situation seemed to make her tired more than angry; her movements had a deliberateness, as if she were having to concentrate in order to function.
She never again asked me why I’d done what I’d done. But when, after a week or so, we again sat at the kitchen table together, she did remark, when our conversation about work couldn’t be made to last any longer: ‘It wasn’t once or twice, was it?’ The question didn’t have an accusatory tone, nor did it suggest that she had any great need to know more of the facts: it was said as though she were inviting me, for my own peace of mind more than anything else, to make a statement of the truth. I told her that the relationship – ‘affair’, she interrupted, softly, as a teacher might correct a student’s usage – had lasted for three or four months. ‘Four or five’ would have been more honest, but I genuinely couldn’t have been precise, and the answer appeared to be sufficient for Aileen. Her eyebrows lifted slightly, signifying that this was more or less what she’d expected to hear. Some time passed before she made any comment. ‘I had no idea,’ she said. Then she asked: ‘And when you say the dates don’t tally, that’s not a lie?’ I told her that it was not; having told the lie repeatedly, I had almost come to believe it. ‘And the test?’ she asked. I promised her that what I’d said about the test was true as well. Nothing more was said on the subject. Standing at the sink after we’d cleared the table, she looked out at the garden, but I could tell that she was not seeing it. Her mouth was tight, expressive of an anger that didn’t match perfectly the expression of her eyes, which was almost wistful; I had the idea, not for the last time, that she was imagining how it would have been, had this woman and I done what Aileen and I had failed to do – produced a child.
Afterwards, she went out into the garden, to read for a while. She spent a lot of time in the garden, whenever I was in the house. This was a Sunday afternoon; a fine, mild day. Later, I looked out and saw her dozing in her chair. A magazine lay open on her chest and she had a hand on it. Her hand didn’t move and her eyes were closed, so I thought she was asleep, but her eyes opened without a flicker and I realised that she hadn’t been sleeping, and that what I had taken to be her face at perfect rest was in fact an expression of aggrieved resignation. ‘How are you?’ I asked when she came indoors. ‘As well as can be expected,’ she answered, without pausing on her way to the door.
There was no shouting, but there was the occasional flare-up of bitterness. One evening she got up and switched off the TV in the middle of a programme, turned to face me and said: ‘It’s a horrible idea, that we got married when you were on the rebound. I’m finding it difficult to accept. Very difficult indeed.’ This was said sharply, with a vehement glance directly into my eyes. I told her she didn’t have to accept it, because it wasn’t what had happened. ‘As far as I recall,’ she carried on, ‘there was never any question of getting married. We were fine as we were. And then you said you wanted to get married. It was your idea.’
‘It was,’ I
said.
‘You treated yourself to a fling, and then you decided you’d like to be married after all. Tried the grass on the other side of the fence, and it turned out not to be greener after all. That’s about the size of it, isn’t it?’
‘No.’ I insisted. ‘It was a long time after, when we got married.’
‘Not my idea of a long time,’ said Aileen.
The business with Sarah, I said, had been a mistake. Of course the grass wasn’t greener; and I’d never thought that it would be. It was a dalliance – that was perhaps the best word for it.
‘I prefer “mistake”,’ said Aileen, with the implication that some mistakes are irreparable.
‘I did an idiotic thing,’ I continued, ‘and I hate myself for it. I hated myself for it at the time—’
‘I’m sure, I’m sure,’ said Aileen, wearily.
‘But it was meaningless. Which isn’t to say,’ I quickly added, ‘that there’s no reason to be upset. Of course, I understand. In your position, I’d be upset.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But it didn’t change anything, for me. There’s no connection. It just happened and as soon as it had happened I wished that it hadn’t.’
‘“As soon as” meaning in this instance “after three or four months”,’ she pointed out.
My response was not immediate. ‘She was irrelevant,’ I said.
Her expression was that of an examiner at the conclusion of a candidate’s extraordinarily incompetent presentation. ‘Please, Dominic,’ she said. ‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging.’ She turned the television back on.
A day or two later, I found myself recalling my father more vividly than I had done for quite some time. I was standing beside the chair that he’d made, the Nakashima chair. Thinking of nothing, I stroked the slender, glass-smooth ribs of its back, and as I was doing this I began to see my father at work. I saw him, as sure as a surgeon, sliding the block plane over the wood. I even seemed to hear the light hiss of the blade. I saw his hands at work, and I could see him standing in front of a finished piece, inspecting it sternly, as if, rather than something he himself had constructed, it were an artefact that it was his job to judge. And of course I felt the loss of him, as I often did, but there was another element to the mood that now came over me: a regret – weak and transient, but nevertheless distinct – that I’d been unable to follow him in his work. This was absurd. These were the facts: my way of thinking had diverged from my father’s; I had made a considered decision to go my own way; I had always known that this decision was correct. And yet, briefly, these certainties were lost, as if dissolved in a miasma of regret that had originated with Sarah and Aileen, then flowed over the memory of my father. I was now imagining that I might have continued to work beside him, if only I had not lacked his aptitude for the craft.
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