Angus was a large, physically powerful man. He had a stocky build, a beard full and tawny, a slightly balding crown and glasses. He could, if he had wished, have flattened Arnold with a single blow from the fist that had, instead, shaken his hand.
‘Perhaps I should just go,’ said Arnold.
Angus looked disappointed.
‘Just go?’
‘You and Vera need time to talk.’
‘You think you can just walk away from this and everything will be like it was?’
There was no threat in Angus’s voice, but instead a kind of incredulity, a disbelief.
‘Whatever you need to do is between you. Unless you have some plan in mind to take revenge, then I don’t have any role here . . .’
‘You have a very important role to play here, Arnold. You and Polly.’
‘Polly?’
‘Your wife.’
‘I know who she is. Polly mustn’t know anything about this.’
‘Do you think that is fair?’
It was Vera who made this remark, the first words she had spoken.
‘Probably not, but what’s fairness got to do with it? If we were worried about fairness, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.’
‘She has a right to know. I have a right to ask for her forgiveness.’
There was a moment of silence while Arnold tried to process this turn in the conversation. He had come up against something that was completely alien to him, a religious moral imperative in action.
‘Are you saying I should confess to her?’
‘I am asking you if you think she has a right to know.’
‘She has a right to know, but I have a right to try and save my marriage.’
‘Your marriage is already damaged, Arnold,’ said Angus, ‘you must be able to see that. The only way you can save it is by adopting a strategy of truthfulness.’
Arnold was conscious that he was shaking his head mechanically, while he tried to form words. ‘No, no. This is mad. You’ve got to let me handle Polly my own way.’
‘By continuing the lies?’ said Vera.
‘If necessary.’
‘Believe me, Arnold,’ said Angus, ‘truthfulness is the best strategy. What you need is Polly’s forgiveness. You have mine. Vera has it as well. Now you and Vera need Polly’s forgiveness. If you are truthful, absolutely truthful, she will forgive you, Arnold, believe me.’
‘It is the most loving thing you can do at this moment, Arnold.’
He began to realize that this is what the two of them must have been discussing all morning, the need to involve Polly, the need to persuade Arnold to involve her. Angus had probably put it to Vera as an ultimatum, he had bullied her into submission. He realized he knew nothing about their marriage.
‘Thank you for your opinion, Angus, and you too Vera, but I believe I am the best judge of Polly’s character and I know how she will react if she discovers the truth. I also have my daughter to think about. Or do you think I have to involve her as well, ask for her forgiveness? Can’t you see this is ridiculous?’
The two were silent, though not in a way that suggested he had stumped them. They were simply waiting for him to say something else.
‘Maybe I will tell her one day,’ he said, ‘but not now. And not in the near future. When Evelyn is grown up – I don’t know.’
Arnold began to leave.
‘Would it help you if we told her?’
It was Vera who said this. Arnold stopped and turned. Then Angus spoke.
‘It would really be no trouble for us. Or we could be there with you when you tell her, to give you both strength.’
Unable to control himself, Arnold gave in to a short fit of laughter. ‘You really mean that, don’t you? You actually think it would be a simple thing. What do you think will happen when I tell Polly, that heavenly light will shine down on us? That angels will appear? That choirs will sing . . . ?’
‘We just want to help you, Arnold. Out of love for both you and Polly.’
‘Let me tell you what would happen if I told her myself. She would throw me out of the house. She might well become physically violent. She might even try to kill me. I am quite serious. I have seen her lose her temper. What I have done would be such a betrayal I could never be forgiven. She would divorce me at the earliest opportunity and do her best to deny me access to my daughter while suing me for the biggest alimony settlement she could possibly obtain. I would be financially and emotionally ruined. I might never recover. I would probably end up an alcoholic even if I hadn’t found a quicker way of killing myself before then. I don’t care what you say about truth or sincerity, this is a question of survival. Nothing else matters. Polly does not need to know anything about this. She doesn’t ever need to know. Do you two understand me?’
He had made again to leave, and by the front door this time, but as he made his way down the hall, he felt a pang of anxiety that he hadn’t done enough to convince the newly strong husband and wife of the importance of not telling Polly anything about the affair. Their silence seemed to follow him down the hall. He turned to meet it, and retraced his steps. Back in the dining room, the husband and wife had not moved a muscle. Both of them were looking at him, expectantly.
‘Would you like me to beg?’ he said.
They didn’t reply.
‘Look at me, I’m begging you. Don’t tell Polly. You have got no right to interfere with my marriage.’
‘You have interfered with mine,’ said Angus, quietly.
Arnold had no answer, and turned to Vera, as if expecting her to express her share of the guilt, to take some of the weight of wrongdoing off his shoulders. But it now seemed she belonged to the new world order of strong marriages, that have been strengthened by the cycle of betrayal and forgiveness. Already he was looking at her and desperately trying to understand how he had once loved this damp, hollow little creature. So sudden, the loss of her glamour, her power to fascinate. Worldliness was re-inhabiting her. Her glances now were full of moral purpose and scrutiny. When he caught her look, it was analytical, judicial. She was seeing him now as something separate from herself. Matter out of place.
‘How did you do it?’ he said. ‘How did you do it, both of you?’
‘We haven’t yet, Arnold,’ said Angus, ‘but we’ve begun the process. It will take time. We can help you. You greatly underestimate Polly if you think she doesn’t have forgiveness in her heart. You paint an unflattering portrait of her as a vengeful bully. I may not know her as well as you, but I know she is not like that. If you told Polly, we could, together, begin the process of reconnecting our hearts.’
Angus was talking, but Arnold was looking at Vera, still. He was waiting for her to speak, to add to what her husband (how difficult to even think that word) was saying. She wiped the end of her nose with a piece of tissue, but didn’t speak. Angus continued.
‘The process of reconnection can only begin once the fact of disconnection is acknowledged. You can’t mend a broken vase if you deny it’s broken in the first place.’
‘That has nothing to do with me and Polly. You have acknowledged your disconnection, as you call it, but Polly and I, we were never out of love. Nothing was broken.’
‘Don’t fool yourself, Arnold. You couldn’t do what you’ve done to someone you love.’
‘I didn’t fall out of love, it’s just that I thought I’d found a love that was greater. Thought. Now I see it was an illusion. A trick.’
Now Vera spoke. ‘It would help us, Arnold, if you shared in the process of renewal with Polly. It would give us strength. It would give us energy and resolve. We could help each other. Angus and I know you don’t have faith, but even so, prayer alone is not enough. For us. We need the support of people we love. You and Polly. If the four of us shared the burden, we would gain strength, all four of us.’
‘You’re proposing some sort of . . . therapy group, for the four of us?’
They laughed, the newly reunited married
couple, the nine-to-fiver and the quiet woman. And their laughter was so out of place, so out of tune with the mood and atmosphere in the room, it was as though a hole had been rent in the ceiling and some unwelcome blinding light had poured in.
‘Not a therapy group, Arnold, oh no, no, no. Nothing so glamorous. But you could call it a group of strength through prayer. A way of being close to Him.’
Him? It took Arnold a moment to realize who they meant, then that recognition of the religious use of the pronoun.
‘A prayer group, then. You want us to join your church?’
They didn’t say anything but both looked at him with such expectation in their faces, such big yesses in their eyes, that they didn’t need to.
‘Well, that is something that is not going to happen. I mean, Vera knows how I feel about praying, but Polly is even more strongly averse to that sort of thing. I would be happy to go along with it if you felt it would help you – but Polly. She is really – how can I put this? She is not merely an atheist, she is quite anti-religious.’
‘What we envisage wouldn’t have to happen in a church, and wouldn’t even have to involve consciously praying. It would merely involve talking, and reflecting. Thinking deeply, and being close, in a special way.’
Slowly Arnold became aware of another peculiar turn the conversation was taking, and a sudden fear crept into his body, that Angus was proposing, in simple terms, some sort of wife-swapping party. Arnold had had an affair with his wife, now he was expecting to be able to do the same in return. Was that really it? Was that really what Angus was hoping? That Vera was some sort of debt that he could repay with Polly. Polly could be persuaded, through conversation, music, drink and regret, that the only way to pay Arnold back for his despicable actions was to have sex with Angus. It would fit in with what he realized now was his long-standing but half-forgotten view of the religious mind, that it was a cover for something deeply corrupt and unsavoury. Was Angus now going to come out with the words, ‘You know, Arnold, I have always been attracted to Polly, and I believe the feeling is mutual.’ He looked closely at Angus, the orange hair now going grey, the tawny beard doing the same. ‘You know Arnold, you and I, we are men of the world. In primitive times we would have been at the head of our respective tribes. We can sort this out in a man-to-man way. If you want to screw Vera, I must be allowed to fuck Polly.’
Arnold now felt it imperative that he get out of there before Angus had any opportunity to utter those words, or any to a similar effect. He turned again towards the door. ‘I’m going to go now. I need time to think things through. You are probably right, it is best if I tell Polly everything, clear the air and start anew – she will, undoubtedly, do some of those things I mentioned earlier, but the storm will pass, and perhaps we’ll be able to start afresh, but I must have time to think it through.’
They thought with the careful consideration of bank managers assessing a loan, and they looked at each other. Arnold thought he saw a glance of assent pass between them.
‘You can take some time, Arnold,’ said Angus, ‘but it must be soon. What you and Vera have done is corrosive. It continues to eat away at the heart, even now that you have ended things. It must happen within days. Before the end of the week.’
13
Having at least been given the promise of time, though not very much, Arnold left the house. The world outside felt very still. By some fluke the usually busy street was empty of traffic and people. He could have walked in the centre of the road if he wanted. He wondered for a moment if something had happened, that the road had been closed off for some reason. But then an ordinary little hatchback appeared round a corner and the world resumed its usual motion. Arnold felt he was in the space between one disaster and another – between the fury of Angus and the fury of Polly, which he thought would be far more difficult to weather. The possibility that Polly would accept his confession in the way that Angus had accepted Vera’s was impossibly remote.
When he got back to his car he decided to drive into the city. Polly would still be at the shop and he felt a sudden need to see her, to check up on her, just to reaffirm for himself who she was, and if she was still the same person he believed her to be. He couldn’t trust his own thoughts and feelings any more. It seemed that anything might pop into his head, any thought at all, or anything that might claim to be a memory, and assume legitimacy, requiring to be acted upon. The breakdown of the affair with Vera had disrupted the new reality that had been settling around him, the invisible palace had been razed and now he had to go back to the old reality and see if it could be lived in as before.
He parked as usual and walked along the pedestrianized medieval street with its tourist shops towards Papyrus, a hundred different types of paper, hand-made, recycled. What was he going to say to her? He went in. There was no sign of Polly. There was her young assistant in the shop. He had forgotten her name.
‘Is Polly around?’
‘She’s gone to the wholesalers,’ said the assistant, ‘to pick up some bags and cellophane.’
‘Right. Can you pass a message on? Tell her I won’t be home tonight? Tell her something’s come up. I’ve got an engagement I’d overlooked . . .’ He was making it up as he went along, and not very well, though he was aware that the young assistant was naive and unsuspecting, and would believe anything he said. ‘A poetry reading. In Birmingham. I’d forgotten all about it . . .’
It suddenly seemed a stroke of luck that Polly wasn’t in the shop, that he hadn’t had a chance to see her. It was impossible for him to go home that evening. He needed a night away from both Polly and Vera, to give him time to think things through, to come up with a plan. Perhaps it was one of those thoughts that he feared popping into his mind that he couldn’t ignore, a dangerous, risky whim. Nevertheless, there it was, in his head, the idea that he had to spend a night away from home. He began walking back to his car, knowing he wouldn’t change his mind.
He lived in an English city that was ordinary in every way except for the fact that it happened to have one of the world’s finest Gothic cathedrals in the middle of it, towering above everything else. When he’d first moved there he’d been fascinated by it, from a purely aesthetic and historical point of view. He’d loved to take a few minutes out of his life to contemplate its beauties and wonders, chiefly the stained glass, some of the most beautiful in the world, every window slowly yielding its bright narratives for him, of suffering among the ancients. He would stop and admire a piece of carving, and be lost for half an hour. He took great pleasure in the slow process of learning more about the building with every visit. All that ended when they began charging an entrance fee. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it, but that it took away the spontaneity and brevity of those visits. Paying a fee meant a feeling of pressure to spend a long time in there, make it a proper visit. He couldn’t just walk through, in idle contemplation, as he’d done before.
Now, as he passed it on the way back to the car, it seemed like a solid expression of the agony of time. All that carving by hand, stone upon stone, the masons chipping away for centuries to raise this accretion of geological sediment. He could only think of pain when he looked at it, of bleeding thumbs, the broken necks of those who’d fallen from its heights, as many must have during all those years of construction. And of the stone itself, chiselled out, undercut and bevelled, those actions so anathematic to flesh. Yet something of that pain was now in his own body. He could feel the cut of fine blades, hammered home. The idea came into his mind that his own flesh and the flesh of the cathedral were entwined in some way.
There was one way to get into the cathedral without paying, and that was if a visitor was intending to pray. Occasionally Arnold had wondered if this would be a good way of gaining access to the place he had loved, but then wondered what would happen – what were the protocols? Did you tell the person in the ticket office that you were here to pray, to worship? And if so, did they do any follow-up checks? Did someone come up behind you to
check you were kneeling down, and if you weren’t were you tactfully but firmly escorted off the premises? He thought it unlikely, but he never tried it, because somehow the burden of pretending to worship was just as troubling, if not more so, than the burden of shelling out for a ticket. It killed the experience he was looking for, the idle contemplation of carved stone and stained glass that he had loved.
There were tours up the tower. He could go up there and throw himself off – that would be a message that would ring home to Angus and Vera. Their precious religiosity used as an instrument of suicide. Too obvious. Too melodramatic. If he was to kill himself, it would have to be done with appropriate understatement.
It was a depressingly commercialized entrance – turnstiles, a ticket desk. He went up to the woman at the desk and said,
‘I have come here to worship.’
The woman smiled, and said, ‘Of course.’ He wondered for a moment if he would be given some sort of ticket or pass, something to denote him as a worshipper among the tourists, some sort of badge or stamp? But of course, it didn’t work like that. We are not in a football stadium or a cinema, there are no ticket inspectors or store detectives. His declaration of an intent to worship was to be taken on trust – but then why doesn’t everyone do it, and get in free? Because not everyone is so lax and morally bankrupt as you, Arnold, who can tell a bare-faced lie to a Christian woman, can make fun of their faith while simultaneously benefitting from it, can use its facilities for nothing and feel justified in doing so. Vainly he felt disappointed that he didn’t have some sort of badge or sash that identified him as a person of faith; like Hancock’s blood donor he felt a need to display his righteousness.
Even though he felt unfollowed, and had no intention of worshipping, even if he knew how such a thing was done, he thought he should make a show of piety in case the woman at the ticket office was watching him covertly, even though for all she knew he might be the sort of person who worshipped while ambling around and looking at stained glass. But even so, he found a seat among the many hundreds of empty chairs, and sat, feeling unable to delve so deeply into his subterfuge to kneel. The cathedral soared on all sides around him in great plumes of stone whose lines and curves gave one the sense of great energy, that there was something pulsing through all this solid stuff like blood through arteries.
The Paper Lovers Page 14