Killing Me Softly

by Nicci French

  ‘Bowling? What the fuck is this?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  He was silent. I put my arms around him and hugged him, but he felt resistant. ‘Adam, you’re my dearest love. I’m in this for life. But marriage is about ordinary things, chores, boring duties, work, squabbles, sorting out squabbles. Everything. Not just, well, burning desire.’

  ‘Why?’ Adam said simply. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. ‘Who says?’

  I stopped hugging him and went and sat on the armchair. I didn’t know if I felt angry or forlorn, if I should shout or weep.

  ‘I want to have children one day, Adam, or maybe I do. I want to get a house sometime and be middle-aged and ordinary. I want to be with you when I’m old.’

  He crossed the room and knelt at my feet and put his face in my lap. I stroked his tangled hair, smelt the sweat of his day on him. ‘You’ll always be with me,’ he said, his voice muffled.

  Pauline’s pregnancy was beginning to show, and her face, normally so pale and severe, looked plump and rosy. Her dark hair, which she usually tied back, fell on to her shoulders. She looked young and pretty and happy. We were shy with each other, courteous and making an effort. I tried to remember what we used to talk about when we saw each other back in the pre-Adam days: everything and nothing, I suppose; casual bits of gossip, hushed confidences, intimate inanities which were like verbal acts of affection. We used to giggle. Be silent. Argue and make up. This evening, however, we had to work hard to keep our conversation from flagging, and whenever there was a pause one of us would rush to fill it.

  After the film we went to a pub. She had tomato juice and I had gin. When I pulled a note out of my wallet to pay for the drinks, the photograph that Adam had taken of me the day he had asked me to marry him fell out too.

  ‘That’s a strange picture,’ she said, picking it up. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

  I stuffed it back between the credit cards and the driving licence. I didn’t want anyone else peering at it – it was for my eyes only.

  We discussed the bad film rather tamely, until suddenly I couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘How’s Jake?’ I asked, as I always did.

  ‘All right,’ she said blankly.

  ‘No, I really mean how is he. I want to know.’

  Pauline looked at me shrewdly. I didn’t look away, or smile meaninglessly, and when she spoke it felt like a kind of victory for something. ‘The plan was that you two were going to get married, have children. Then it all changed. He told me that everything was going well and that it came out of the blue. Is that true?’

  I nodded. ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘He’s shaken. He was so wrong about you.’ I didn’t speak. ‘He was, wasn’t he? Did you love him?’

  I thought back to the distant days of me and Jake. I could hardly remember what his face looked like any more. ‘Of course I did. And there was you, and the Crew, Clive and Sylvie and the rest, like a big family. I think I thought the same as Jake. I felt I was betraying all of you. I still think that. It’s as if I’ve become an outsider.’

  ‘That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Being an outsider. Choosing the heroic loner and giving everything up for him. Great fantasy.’ Her voice was flat and faintly contemptuous.

  ‘That’s not what I want.’

  ‘Has anyone told you that you look completely different from three months ago?’

  ‘No, they haven’t.’

  ‘Well, you do.’

  ‘How?’

  Pauline looked at me reflectively with an almost hard expression. Was she hitting back at me?

  ‘You look thinner,’ she said. ‘Tired. You’re not as tidy as you used to be. You always wore neat clothes and your hair was well cut and everything about you seemed ordered and composed. Now’ – she stared at me, and I was uncomfortably aware of the bruise on my neck – ‘you look a bit, well, wasted. 111.’

  ‘I’m not composed,’ I said, truculently. ‘I don’t think I ever was. But you, on the other hand, look wonderful.’

  Pauline smiled a smile of contained satisfaction. ‘It’s the pregnancy,’ she purred. ‘You should try it sometime.’

  When I got back from the film Adam was not in. At about midnight, I gave up waiting for him and climbed into bed. I stayed awake until one, reading, listening for his feet pounding up the stairs. Then I slept fitfully, waking every so often to look at the luminous hands on the alarm clock. He didn’t come home until three. I heard him throw off his clothes and shower himself. I wasn’t going to ask him where he’d been. He climbed into bed and spooned himself behind me, warm and clean, smelling of soap. He put his hands on my breasts and kissed my neck. Why do people shower at three in the morning?

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ I said.

  ‘Letting air into our relationship, of course.’

  I cancelled the meal. I bought all the food and the drink, but then I couldn’t go through with it after all. I came in with the shopping that Saturday morning; Adam was in the kitchen drinking a beer. He jumped up and helped me unpack everything. He took my coat off and rubbed my fingers, which were cramped from carrying the bags back from the supermarket. He made me sit down while he put the ready-roasted chicken and the different cheeses in the small fridge. He made a pot of tea for me and eased my shoes off, rubbed my feet. He put his arms around me as if he worshipped me and kissed my hair, and said, ever so softly, ‘Did you go out of London the week before last, Alice?’

  ‘No, why?’ I was too startled to think clearly. My heart was banging uncomfortably, and I was sure he must be able to feel it through my cotton shirt.

  ‘Not at all?’ He kissed the side of my jaw.

  ‘I worked all of last week, you know that.’

  He had found something out. My brain worked furiously.

  ‘Of course I do.’ His hands slid down and cupped my buttocks. He held me very tightly, kissed me again.

  ‘I went to a meeting in Maida Vale one day, but that’s all.’

  ‘What day would that be?’

  ‘I can’t think.’ Maybe he’d phoned the office that day, maybe that’s what had happened. But why ask me now? ‘Wednesday, I think it was. Yes.’

  ‘Wednesday. That’s a coincidence.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your skin feels all silky today.’ He kissed my eyelids, then started very slowly to undo the buttons on my shirt. I stood quite still as he took the shirt off. What had he found out? He undid my bra and took that off as well.

  ‘Careful, Adam, the curtains are open. Someone could see us.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Take off my shirt. That’s it. Now my belt. Take my belt out of my jeans.’

  I did.

  ‘Now feel in my pocket. Go on, Alice. No, not that pocket, the other one.’

  ‘There’s nothing there.’

  ‘Yes, there is. It’s only small, though.’

  My fingers felt a stiff piece of paper. I drew it out.

  ‘There you are, Alice. A train ticket.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For last Wednesday.’

  ‘Yes. So?’ Where had he found that? I must have left it in my coat or bag or something.

  ‘The day you were out of the office in – where did you say?’

  ‘Maida Vale.’

  ‘Yes, Maida Vale.’ He started to undo my jeans. ‘Though the train ticket is for Gloucester.’

  ‘What is this about, Adam?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘What has a train ticket got to do with anything?’

  ‘There. Step out of your jeans. It was in your coat pocket.’

  ‘What were you doing going through my coat pocket?’

  ‘What were you doing, Alice, going to Gloucester?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Adam, I never went to Gloucester.’ It never occurred to me to tell him the truth. At least I still had a trace of self-preservation left.

 
‘Take your knickers off.’

  ‘No. Stop this.’

  ‘Why Gloucester, I wonder?’

  ‘I never went there, Adam. Mike went there a few days ago – maybe it was Wednesday – to visit some warehouse space. Maybe it’s his ticket. But why does it matter?’

  ‘Why was it in your pocket, then?’

  ‘Fuck knows. Look, if you don’t believe me, ring him up and ask him. Go on. I’ll dictate the number to you.’

  I glared at him defiantly. I knew Mike was away for the weekend anyway.

  ‘We’ll forget about Mike and Gloucester, then, shall we?’

  ‘I’d already forgotten it,’ I said.

  He pushed me to the floor and knelt over me. He looked as if he were about to cry and I held my arms out to him. When he struck me with his belt, the buckle biting into my flesh, it didn’t even hurt very much. Nor the second time. Was this the spiral my GP had warned me of?

  ‘I love you so very much, Alice,’ he groaned, afterwards.

  ‘You’ve no idea how very much I love you. Don’t ever let me down. I wouldn’t be able to bear it.’

  I put off the meal, saying to everyone I called that I had flu. It was true that I felt so exhausted it was like being ill. We ate the chicken I had bought in bed and went to sleep early, locked in each other’s arms.

  Twenty-four

  A temporary hero and celebrity, Adam began to get communications from the world outside, relayed from the newspapers and publishers to which they’d been sent. People wrote to him as they might have written to Dr Livingstone or Lawrence of Arabia, complicated theories and grievances outlined over a dozen pages in minuscule handwriting and unusual colours of ink. There were adoring letters from young girls that made me smile, and become a little worried. There was a letter from the widow of Tomas Benn – who had died on the mountain – but it was in German, and Adam didn’t bother to translate it for me. ‘She wants to see me,’ he said, wearily, tossing the letter on to the pile.

  ‘What does she want?’ I asked.

  ‘To talk,’ he said curtly. ‘To hear that her husband was a hero.’

  ‘Are you going to see her?’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t help her. Tommy Benn was a rich man out of his class, that’s all.’

  Then there were people who wanted to go on expeditions. And there were people with projects, ideas, obsessions, fantasies and a great deal of hot air. Adam ignored most of them. Once or twice he was lured out for a drink and I would join him in some bar in central London being talked at by a magazine editor or a bright-eyed researcher.

  One day there was another unpromising approach, a foreign accent on a bad line early on a rainy Tuesday morning. I picked up the phone and was discouraging. I handed the receiver across the bed to Adam who was downright rude. But the caller persisted and Adam agreed to meet him.

  ‘So?’ I asked Adam, when he slouched in late one evening and took a beer from the fridge.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, banging the bottle open in his macho way on the edge of the table. He looked puzzled, almost stunned.

  ‘What was it about?’

  ‘A man in a suit who works for a German TV company. Knows a bit about climbing. He says they want to do a documentary about a climb. They’d like me to lead it. Any time I want, anywhere in the world, with whoever I want, the more challenging the better and they’ll organize finance.’

  ‘That sounds amazing. Isn’t that perfect?’

  ‘There must be a catch. There must be something wrong with the plan, but I haven’t worked out what it is yet.’

  ‘What about Daniel? I thought you were going with him next year.’

  ‘Fuck Daniel. That was just for the money. I just can’t believe it’s for real.’

  Apparently it was for real. There were more drinks, then meetings. One evening, late at night when we were a bit drunk, Adam told me what he would like to do. He would like to go up Everest and not even attempt to get to the top: just clear the mountain of all the shit, bits of tent and frayed line, empty oxygen bottles, litter, even some of the dead bodies that were still up there, crammed into their last useless shelters. I thought it was beautiful and I coaxed him into scrawling the idea on a piece of paper, which I then typed into a presentable form. The TV company said yes to everything. It would make a great film. It had mountains and ecology.

  It was wonderful, I felt wonderful. Adam had been like a boiling pot, spluttering and splattering on the stove, and it was as if he had suddenly been turned down to a more manageable simmer. Adam’s life was climbing and me, and for a couple of months it had been almost entirely me, and I had begun to wonder if I would get worn out, literally worn out, by the intensity of his attention. I loved Adam, I adored Adam, I lusted after Adam, but it was a relief now sometimes to lie in bed, sipping wine while he talked of the number of people he should take, when he should go, and I contributed nothing. I just nodded and enjoyed his enthusiasm. It was nice, just nice but nothing transcendent, and that was good too but I was careful not to say that to Adam.

  For my part, I was also, gradually, becoming calmer about Adam’s past. The whole Michelle thing was now part of the landscape, the sort of thing we all get involved with when we’re young in one way or another. And Michelle had her baby and her husband now. She didn’t need my help. His previous girlfriends, the long-term ones, didn’t really mean much more to me than, say, the mountains he had summitted. If, when I was talking to Klaus or Deborah or Daniel or another of his older climbing friends, a mention of one of them came up I wouldn’t pay particular attention. But obviously you are interested in everything to do with the person you are in love with and to say nothing at all would have been an affectation. So I picked up information about them here and there and began to form a picture of them in my mind, to consider them in chronological order.

  One evening we were back at Deborah’s Soho flat, but as guests this time. Daniel was going to be there. I had suggested that Daniel could go along on the Everest expedition. Adam was generally about as likely to take my advice on the subject of mountaineering as he was that of the doorknob of our bedroom, but on this occasion he looked reflective rather than dismissive. For most of the evening, he and Daniel were deep in conversation leaving Deborah and me to talk by ourselves.

  It was a simple meal, just ravioli bought from across the street, salad from round the corner, and bottles of Italian red wine poured into dangerously large glasses. After we had finished the meal, Deborah took one of the bottles from the table and we went and sat on the floor in front of the open fire. She topped up my glass yet again. I didn’t feel exactly drunk, but I felt that my edges had gone fuzzy and as if there was a soft mattress between me and the floor. Deborah stretched out.

  ‘I sometimes feel there are ghosts in this flat,’ she said, with a smile.

  ‘You mean, people who used to live here?’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘No, I mean you and Adam. This was where it all started.’

  I supposed that the colour of my cheeks would be camouflaged by the fire and the wine. ‘I hope we tidied up properly,’ was all I could manage.

  She lit a cigarette and reached across to the table for an ashtray. She lay back down on the floor. ‘You’re good for Adam,’ she said.

  ‘Am I? I sometimes worry that I’m not enough of a part of his world.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  I looked across at the table. Adam and Daniel were drawing diagrams and even talking about spreadsheets.

  Deborah winked at me. ‘It’s going to be the most glamorous trash collection in history.’ She laughed.

  I looked across. They wouldn’t be listening to what we were saying.

  ‘But his last er… girlfriend, Lily, she wasn’t involved with climbing, was she? Did you meet her?’

  ‘A few times. But she was nothing. That was just a transitional thing. She was all right, but she was a pain, whining after Adam all the time. When he woke up and saw what she was like he dum
ped her.’

  ‘What was Françoise like?’

  ‘Ambitious. Rich. A pretty good technical climber.’

  ‘Beautiful, as well.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ said Deborah ironically. ‘Only if you like long-legged, thin, suntanned women with long, fine black hair. Unfortunately most men do.’

  ‘It was a terrible thing for Adam.’

  ‘Worse for Françoise. Anyway,’ she pulled a face, ‘it was finished, wasn’t it? She was a climbing groupie. She liked the guys.’ She dropped her voice a little. ‘It may have taken Adam a little time to discover that, but he’s a grown-up man. He knows what happens when you sleep with climbing doctors.’

  And then I knew.

  ‘So you and…’ and I nodded over at Adam.

  Deborah leaned over and put her hand on mine. ‘Alice, it was nothing, for either of us. I just didn’t want to have a secret between us.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. I didn’t mind. That much. ‘Then before Françoise there was the girl called Lisa,’ I said, prompting her.

  ‘You want to do this?’ asked Deborah, with amused suspicion. ‘Adam dumped Lisa when he fell for Françoise.’

  ‘Was she American?’

  ‘No. British. Welsh, Scottish, one of those things. Part-time climber, I think. They were A Couple,’ she pronounced the words as if they were inherently comic, ‘for years. But, Alice, you mustn’t get all of this wrong. They were A Couple,’ she made invisible quotation marks in the air with her fingers, ‘but they never lived together. Adam’s never been committed to anybody the way he has been to you. It’s just a different thing.’

  I continued to press. ‘There was always someone in the background. Although he had other affairs that didn’t mean anything – as you say – there was always a permanent relationship. When one finished another started.’

  Deborah lit another cigarette and frowned with thought. ‘Maybe. I can’t remember who he was connected with, as it were, before Lisa. Maybe I never met her. There was a girl a few years before that when I first knew him. What was she called? Penny. She married another old friend of mine, a climber called Bruce Maddern. They live in Sydney. I haven’t seen them in a decade.’ She looked round at me then snatched another glance across at Adam. ‘Jesus, what are we doing? You don’t want to bother about all of this. The only point of it is that Adam stayed committed to people he wasn’t really in love with.’ She smiled. ‘You can rely on him. He won’t let you down. And you mustn’t let him down. I’ve climbed with the guy. He doesn’t tolerate you failing to do what you’ve committed to do.’