The Paper Lovers

by Gerard Woodward

  ‘It’s absurd. It’s Britain’s second biggest city and I’ve never been there,’ said Polly.

  ‘Have I been there?’ said Evelyn. No one answered her.

  ‘What was it like, Birmingham?’

  It amazed Arnold that they had believed his lie so easily. This was the evening he had earmarked for telling Polly the truth, yet he began it by telling her the most detailed and layered lies he had ever told her.

  ‘I didn’t have much chance to look around . . .’

  ‘Where was the reading?’

  ‘It was in a sort of old church that had been converted. I can’t remember what it was called now . . .’

  He had never been to Birmingham either. Britain’s second biggest city, and he’d never been there.

  By the end of the conversation he had constructed an elaborate and entirely imaginary Birmingham, at once precisely detailed enough to be convincing, and vague enough that it couldn’t be checked or verified online. He was aware of the pointlessness of all this lying if he was going to tell Polly the truth later on that evening, when Evelyn was in bed.

  After dinner there were various chores to do. Evelyn was dragged to the kitchen to help with the washing up, Arnold stole a few minutes in his study, where the poems of Martin Guerre were still sitting on his desk. He cursed himself for not having taken them with him when he went to see the boy in the pub. Now their presence seemed an insurmountable problem, even though all he had to do was put them in the post. But something about Martin’s attitude to them, his claimed loss of interest in them, made it difficult to think about returning them now. He wondered if he should just destroy them and forget all about Martin Guerre and his dodgy poetry. At least if Polly and I split up, he thought, I won’t have to worry any more about indignant poets. The Papyrus Press would fold.

  Later, it was his turn to read to Evelyn. He went upstairs to her bedroom, which had been carefully decorated according to her specific and precise demands. She didn’t want murals, but she wanted each wall painted two different colours, divided horizontally in half. They were bright and clashing, but Arnold had done as he was told. Her room was so bright it hurt the eyes, and his daughter so pretty it hurt his eyes as well. Even when she scowled, as she was doing now. It was a mock-scowl, because he was late, and she had been waiting for him. She pointed out that there was a spider in the room, but it was so small he couldn’t actually see it. She became annoyed with him for not being able to see it, even when she was pointing directly at it, and it was just a few inches in front of him. When he did finally see it he laughed, because it was barely bigger than a little fingernail. But it was still a spider, size didn’t have much to do with it, as far as Evelyn was concerned. He passed a finger through the spider’s invisible thread and took up its slack, and became bound to it. It seemed to Evelyn that he held the creature by some magnetic force, that it was attracted to his fingertip, and she was repelled, rucking her face in disgust. The spider’s face bore a similar expression, Arnold imagined, looking at it closely, bringing it up to his eyes to see what moved there in the little speck of energy. A cross face, disgruntled, scowling, staring. He put it out of the window.

  He began reading a book about American teenagers. He had dreamed of reading his daughter the beautifully written classics that he had loved as a child, but she found the Alice books baffling, and The Wind in the Willows boring. It broke his heart, but she insisted he read her books she had chosen. Teen novels set in Los Angeles, in which over-pampered girls competed to lose their virginity. They had a strong moral undertone, according to Polly, though he couldn’t quite see it himself. But he was grateful that Evelyn had wanted him to read at all, and was interested enough to have even developed a literary taste, no matter that it seemed almost deliberately to be as far removed from his own as possible. He read the story of the 8th Street Girls, doing the voices in shrill LA accents that always drove Evelyn to laughter.

  ‘Daddy, do you like my laugh?’ she said, interrupting him mid-sentence.

  Arnold pretended to give the question careful consideration, weighing up the pros and cons before answering, ‘Yes, it’s a very good laugh.’

  ‘What’s good about it?’

  ‘It’s just a very good laugh. It’s funny.’

  ‘Because I don’t like Irina’s laugh.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No. It really gets on my nerves.’

  ‘Why? How does she laugh?’

  ‘She’s just got this really annoying laugh, like she throws her head back and makes this sort of clicking sound, and her neck folds up.’

  ‘I can see that might be annoying, but if she’s happy . . .’

  ‘Laugh,’ she said. It was a command.

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘I want to hear your laugh. Laugh.’

  ‘I can’t just laugh.’

  ‘Yes you can.’

  ‘You laugh first.’

  ‘No. You’ve got to laugh first. I want to see how you laugh.’

  ‘You know how I laugh.’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Say something funny.’

  ‘I can’t. Do you like Mummy’s laugh?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘My friend Caley has a stupid laugh. She hoots like an owl. It’s so embarrassing.’

  ‘Do you like any of your friends’ laughs?’

  ‘Not really. But I feel bad because Susie said she likes my laugh. She said I’ve got the best laugh in the school. But I don’t like hers, she’s got a silly laugh. She sounds like a mouse squeaking.’

  They talked for a while about laughing, Arnold giving her a little lecture on the varieties of laughter, that while we can say that someone has a particular type of laugh, most people have a repertoire of laughs for different situations – the sarcastic laugh, the incredulous laugh, the knowing laugh, the hysterical laugh and so on. Evelyn seemed satisfied with this, and Arnold was allowed to go on reading about the 8th Street Girls, and then he went downstairs, neither of them having laughed out loud for each other.

  It was a slow terrifying descent for Arnold, because he was entering the phase of the evening that he and Polly set aside for themselves. Usually they spent this time on their own separate tasks – Arnold working in his study, Polly in her own corner of the living room which had become her office, and sometimes they would watch something on TV together, or listen to music. If Arnold was to tell her about his affair with Vera, then this would be the time to do it. He had an inkling of what it might feel like to walk to the scaffold. He would be ending the life he had known, sacrificing his life with his family. It seemed mad, to do this. He was aware that telling Polly the truth was going against every instinct he had about how to live his life. Now that the affair was over it had rapidly dwindled to something of insignificance for him. A few days ago he would have struggled to choose between his family and Vera, but not now. Now a sanity had returned to him, a steadiness of gaze and purpose, a greater knowledge of himself and others. He believed he understood the damage he had done and how best to handle it. It was completely outrageous that he was being put in this position by Angus, that he was being threatened. And then the thought – what if Polly found out from Angus rather than him, would that not be far, far worse? He had to tell her, and before Angus had a chance.

  He had spent some of the time in the hotel the previous night rehearsing this moment, if it should come to it. The form of words he should use, the tone of voice. At one point he thought he had found it, the perfect form of words that gave him the best chance of a response that wasn’t instantly apocalyptic. Now he couldn’t remember a single thing about that rehearsal, not a single word, not a single intonation.

  When he entered the living room he found that Polly was standing in the middle of it, completely transformed. She had changed her clothes and was wearing something he had never seen before, a sort of patchwork trouser suit in brightly contrasting hues. She looked like a clown or Pierrot or Harlequin, but without
looking ridiculous. The garments were of such complexity he couldn’t take them in at once, but just noticed a general pattern of colour and texture, of irregular patches of brightness and of seams and broderie in twisting twirling shapes. It was as though a stained-glass window had come to life – like one of those windows in the cathedral, the clothes seemed to move and swirl, as if they were alive. And out of this swirl of living patterns and colour there was Polly’s face looking at him with a broad smile, a look of triumph that was beautiful in the same way that the clothes were beautiful.

  She had put herself on display for him. She had, while he was reading to Evelyn, gone to the hurried trouble of changing her clothes, ready for his return to the living room. He vaguely understood that these were clothes she had made, that she had been working on for months. The clothes were so extraordinary that it was as though Polly had instantly planted herself in his mind, replacing the now almost forgotten Vera. He reached out to touch the clothes, as if unable to believe they were real, but they were, and felt as exquisite as they looked – some of the patches were velvety, some were silky, there were bits of mirror that were hard and smooth, there were sequins and gemstones. She was smiling in the midst of all this colour, and she asked him what he thought, and he didn’t quite know what to say that didn’t sound stupid, or banal, so instead he just carried on feeling her new clothes, and this turned into a kind of intense lovemaking that took place in the living room, more intense than anything that they had done that year.

  15

  In the events of that week, crowded as they were with his imaginary journey to Birmingham and his sense of reconciliation with Polly, Arnold began to put to the back of his mind the promise he had made to Angus and Vera, that he would tell Polly everything by the end of the week. In only a matter of days that shocking confrontation with Angus had receded into the past. When he thought about Angus and Vera, they seemed small, unfrightening things. He imagined that they, like him, would feel, as the days passed, that the initial sense of betrayal and anger can quickly dissipate, so that we wonder why we felt so strongly about something that only a few hours beforehand we might have given our lives for. Vera was already something that he could only puzzle over – the quiet, colourless woman who had once held his attention so that he forgot the brilliant spectrum of his own wife’s personality and form. She too must wonder what she had seen in him, the quiet, faithless poet, a feeble, invertebrate thing next to the pious, bearded bear of her husband. They surely must see that time alone was enough to heal their wounds, there was no need for prayer groups or therapy groups or sessions of primal screaming or whatever they had in mind. And so he regarded the end of the week as no kind of deadline. He didn’t expect anything to happen.

  And then on Friday evening, just before dinner, Polly mentioned in a casual way that she had met Angus in the school playground that morning, and that she had a message to pass on. The cold fear Arnold felt the moment Angus’s name was mentioned was softened a little when it became apparent from her tone of voice and manner that Polly was still innocent of any knowledge of his wrongdoing.

  ‘Angus?’

  ‘Yes, Vera’s husband. I didn’t know you were friends with him, but anyway, he asked for you to phone him.’

  ‘Does he often do the school run?’

  ‘I’ve never seen him there before. It was very unusual. Vera wasn’t there, I suppose she was sick, I forgot to ask, I was so surprised. He must have taken the time off work.’

  ‘Why does he want me to call him?’

  ‘He said you’d know what it was about. Something about Sunday?’

  So Angus had refused, so far, to disappear. The confidence that Arnold had slowly built up over the last twenty-four hours vanished instantly, and he felt a sense of cold dread for the rest of the evening. He wondered when he would find an opportunity to phone, and how to explain the conversation to Polly, if she overheard any part of it. He stumbled through the routines of the evening. They watched a bit of the news on TV, and he laughed at something a political commentator said. Polly asked him what he was laughing at, and he became irritated, because he couldn’t find a way of explaining the joke, which made him realize he didn’t fully understand it himself. And he became tetchy at having his own vanity and ignorance exposed.

  ‘Men don’t like to admit to their ignorance, do they?’ Polly said. ‘You start so many sentences with the words “I’m sure . . .” I could find it quite annoying if I thought about it too much. “I’m sure everything will be all right. I’m sure your lump is benign. I’m sure the environmental crisis will sort itself out.”’ She never talked like that normally, she was never so detailed in her criticisms of him. She never went to such lengths to identify and illustrate them. ‘You are always sure about things, aren’t you?’

  Arnold didn’t say anything.

  ‘Daddy’s not sure,’ said Evelyn.

  ‘I need to do some work upstairs,’ said Arnold, lifting himself up, with difficulty (he felt unaccountably tired) from the couch and moving towards the door.

  ‘What about phoning Angus?’

  ‘I’ll phone him from my study.’

  When he did phone later, sure that Polly was still downstairs and out of earshot (though she would have had to stand with her ear to his study door to catch anything), it was Vera who answered.

  ‘Hello, Vera, it’s me.’

  ‘Oh, hello,’ there was a slight panic in her voice, as though she wanted to get off the line as quickly as possible, ‘Angus – it’s . . .’ She evidently couldn’t say Arnold’s name. But her voice was quickly replaced by her husband’s.

  ‘Hello, Arnold, thank you for calling.’

  ‘Polly said you wanted me to.’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to hear about your plans.’

  ‘What do you mean, “plans”?’

  A moment’s pause, as if Angus couldn’t believe he was being asked the question.

  ‘It’s quite obvious that you haven’t told Polly yet.’

  ‘No, I haven’t told her.’

  ‘Only you said you would tell her by the end of this week, and today’s Friday, so . . .’

  ‘Listen, Angus, I realize I’ve done a terrible thing, and I apologize most profoundly – you have every right to be angry with me, but you mustn’t think you have the right to interfere in my family and how I handle my relationship with my wife.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Let me explain something to you, Arnold. What you have done is more than terrible, and what I feel is much more than anger. You seem to think you are free to pick up your life where you left off, as though nothing had happened. We do not have that privilege. The damage has been done and the healing process cannot take place without your help. I am not threatening you in any way, but if you don’t undertake to help us in this process, I will have no recourse but to turn to Polly for help. I could come round this evening . . .’

  ‘No, no. Angus, please. Listen . . .’

  ‘Do you want to know what I was doing this afternoon? I was searching through the internet for poisons. Not to give to you, or Vera, or anyone else. I was looking for poisons for myself. Something I could drink that would act quickly and painlessly and stop the pain for ever. And then I only felt all the more terrible for even having those thoughts. I got down on my knees and prayed. Right there in the office, at my desk. People around me asked what was wrong. I told them a relative was sick. Another lie. Then I felt bad for lying.’

  ‘Angus, I don’t know what to say.’

  There was a lengthy pause on the line. Then Angus’s voice again, slightly more reasoned.

  ‘There is another way forward, Arnold. The reason you are unable to tell Polly the truth is because you don’t have the strength. The courage. This is not your fault. I don’t blame you. But there is a way of gaining that courage and strength, and that is to come to our church.’

  Arnold couldn’t help letting out a breath of laughter, that he drew back almost immediately. He shook his head to
himself, in disbelief. This is what the nine-to-five man had wanted all along, he said to himself, this is what they both wanted, to save his soul.

  ‘Really, Angus?’

  ‘It is only through following that path that you might begin to understand the importance of forgiveness, and why you and Vera need it from Polly.’

  ‘Angus. I’m not a believer. I’ve told you. It would be pointless.’

  ‘That is precisely why it would help you – and us – if you came. If you refuse, then I am afraid I really will have to involve Polly. I can’t see any other way these issues can be resolved.’

  Arnold paused, made dumb by the shock of Angus’s demand. He wanted to ask him what he was supposed to tell Polly. Was this another secret he had to keep from her?

  ‘I’m not sure, Angus. I’m not sure – it’s just another way that Polly might find out. I would have to explain going to church to her.’

  ‘That’s not my problem . . .’

  ‘It is if you are asking me to do something so out of character that it will arouse suspicion.’

  ‘Well, you have until Sunday to make up your mind, but I will expect to see you at church.’

  He gave the address and the time they were to meet, and then put the phone down, allowing Arnold no further say in the matter.

  If Evelyn would allow them, Arnold and Polly usually spent Sundays slowly and lazily, not getting up till nine or ten, and spending the rest of the day reading, eating and going for walks. But Arnold had to be at Angus and Vera’s church by nine fifteen. He would have to get up early on a Sunday, and explain why. He spent most of the Saturday trying to think of a plausible reason for going somewhere on Sunday morning. His first idea was to say he was playing golf with Angus, since that was something he understood regular men liked to do on Sundays. The problem was that he had not shown the slightest interest in golf in his life until then. Fishing? Football? Flying lessons? The problem with all of these kinds of lies was that they would need Angus and Vera’s corroboration, and he rather doubted they would be keen to back him up. Then there were the children. How could little Irina and her siblings be expected to join in any subterfuge; they would be more likely to ask Evelyn why she hadn’t come to church with her father. He realized he would have to tell Polly the truth, and tried to imagine her response.