Richard sleeps, I don't. Whatever it is that makes corporeal brains and bodies need those daily hours of oblivion doesn't affect me. While he sleeps I spend my time probing those regions of his mind that I'm afraid to enter while he's awake for fear of arousing his suspicions. Sometimes my movements trigger dreams in him, but dreams are acceptable. He knows about dreams. We all think we know about dreams. We take them for granted, however extraordinary, and push them aside when we wake. I've even tried talking to him in his dreams, hoping that maybe I could establish some kind of bridgehead between us. It didn't work. Part of him realised what was happening and the panic started up again. I had to stir up a quick smokescreen of all kinds of irrelevancies so that he passed the incident off as a standard nightmare.
I've combed back and back through his memory banks, comparing them with my own, noting where he made one decision where I had made another, or where things had happened to him slightly differently from the way they happened to me. The similarities between our lives are overwhelming, which makes the differences between us all the more extraordinary. I was just beginning to think that if the same was true of my Anne and this Anne, then there was hope yet that I might in time elbow this lumbering hulk of Richard aside and find a way to rebuild between us, her and me, the relationship we had enjoyed in that other world. We might even — I don't know how these things work exactly, but our genes must be pretty much identical to what they were in that other world — we might even be able to have Charlie, or at least a child almost identical to him.
Then it happened, this terrible thing. It involved Anne.
Richard was due to fly to Chicago and stay overnight for a business meeting. His plane was in the early evening, but by mid-afternoon it was obvious that he was coming down with flu. He thought about calling Harold to have him go in his place, then remembered that Harold was in Phoenix working on an acquisition for another client. So he cancelled his meeting, cancelled his flight, and went home.
Anne was out — probably, he thought, at one of her committees. He left a note for her just inside the door, swallowed some aspirin and vitamin C, and put himself to bed.
By the time she got back he was already half-asleep. I heard her come in, but he didn't. I heard her say something under her breath when she read his note and put her head into the bedroom. It sounded like she said 'Oh, no!', but very softly, barely a whisper.
She came closer and must have been standing over him for several moments before he sensed her presence and opened his eyes. She kissed and fussed over him and asked if she should call the doctor. He said absolutely not (he was a coward about doctors — more so than ever after having been shut up in that clinic). All he wanted, he said, was to sleep it off, maybe spend tomorrow in bed, then he would be fine. It was a twenty-four-hour thing that half the people in the office had already had. He apologised that probably she would catch it now and she told him not to worry about that, just get well. She said she'd let him sleep and look in later to see if there was anything he needed.
I've no idea how much later 'later' was. He was in a deep sleep by then and I was going over his memory of an important conversation that he'd had with his father when he was fourteen. I'd had the same conversation with my father — ostensibly about career possibilities, but really about what a man searches for in life — except for certain tiny details. I was trying to figure out if these details had ultimately led to some of the major differences between Richard and myself, when I heard the door open and Anne's footsteps come softly across the carpet.
His eyes were closed, so I couldn't see anything, but I could hear her breathing as she leant close. I supposed she just wanted to make sure that he was sleeping peacefully before going back to whatever she was doing. But just as she turned to leave the telephone rang.
To say it rang is an exaggeration. It had a soft tone which at the best of times would take some moments to penetrate even a light sleep. This was because Richard preferred to be coaxed awake rather than startled. On this occasion it barely even hinted at a first ring before — she was standing right by it — she picked it up.
She answered softly so as not to wake him, but as soon as she heard who it was she became flustered and afraid to talk. She needn't have worried. There wasn't even a flicker of response in Richard's brain. He was sleeping so heavily that a fire alarm wouldn't have roused him. Even I, fully awake, couldn't hear much — except that it was a man's voice at the other end.
'I can't talk,' she said in a muffled, urgent whisper as though her hand was shielding her mouth. 'He's here. I've been trying to call you. No, he didn't go, he's sick. I'm in the bedroom — wait.'
Very quietly she put down the phone, tiptoed out, closing the door with barely a sound, and presumably continued the conversation on a safe extension.
Richard slept on. But I . . . you can imagine how I felt. You can imagine how much I would have given for the use of his hands to pick up that phone and find out what was going on.
But I knew what was going on. There was no mistaking that tone of voice, that intimate conspiratorial guilt.
Anne was unfaithful.
***
Richard spent the next day in bed with a temperature, no appetite and a headache. Agnes the housekeeper stayed on a few hours extra to keep him supplied with mint tea, vitamins, and whatever else he needed during the day while Anne was out.
I, meanwhile, was near demented. Not only was the pain of what I had discovered all but unbearable, but my impotence to do anything about it was driving me to distraction. I paced, metaphorically, back and forth in his brain for hour upon hour, wringing my hands and cudgelling my brains for an answer.
While he lay there like a sack of potatoes, sipping lemon-flavoured flu remedies, blowing his nose and blearily watching daytime television, I was being driven insane by lurid fantasies of where Anne might be, what she might be doing, and with whom.
In a sense, of course, it was none of my business. These people's lives were their own affair and I had no right to interfere. But, like all moral arguments, such a proposition had little or no place in the real world in which I found myself.
I was aware — how could I not be? — that the true source of my anguish was not what this Anne was doing, but what my Anne might have been capable of, might even have done, without my ever knowing. Could I have been living in a dream world, a fool's paradise all that time? Was — Heaven forgive me for the thought — was Charlie mine? There was no way now I could know anything for sure, but the more I could find out about this Anne in this life, the more chance I would have of understanding my own Anne in our life. I was fully aware that I might come up with some things about her which I had not previously suspected and which would be painful to confront. But I had no choice. I had to know.
And this passive, flu-ridden, steaming lump of lard had to find out for me. If that meant his finding out some painful truths for himself, so be it. I was ruthless in my desperation.
But how was I to make him do it? He suspected nothing. Nothing! It had never crossed his impossibly complacent mind that his wife might be unfaithful. To him their lives were on track and headed towards their preset goals. I wasn't even sure, when I came to think about it, how he'd take the news that he'd been cuckolded. Would he be devastated? Philosophical? Indifferent? Dangerous?
Supposing he committed suicide? Blew his brains out — and me with them.
I was facing a double problem: how to alert him to what was going on; and how to exercise at least some control over his response.
And suddenly — Eureka — I saw that I had stumbled on the answer to all my problems at once. Even before the shock of Anne's betrayal I had been searching for a way to communicate with Richard without throwing him once more into panic and confusion. Now I had it. I had the means not only to open a dialogue but also, I was fairly sure, to influence his behaviour. I saw now how I could make him accept me as a natural part of himself that must be listened to, not some alien invader to be fled from and res
isted.
I would be the Voice of Jealousy.
The whole plan unfolded in my mind with an appalling simplicity. After all, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a voice in your head saying 'I am your alter ego from another universe' is not necessarily to be trusted, and you may be wise to avoid operating heavy machinery until it goes away.
But the still, small voice of jealousy, that worm of doubt eating away at the back of your brain, that is a voice with a name to it, a voice you know about. Listening to that voice does not necessarily mean you are going crazy. Cloaked in that universal metaphor, I could step forward with confidence to centre stage and make my presence known at last.
Being feverish, Richard was in a particularly vulnerable state of mind. It seemed natural that thoughts should float into his consciousness from heaven knows where, trailing with them strings of free association leading to destinations as unknown as their origins. His resistance was low, he was suggestible. He thought he could indulge himself in fantasy and discard it when it suited him. He was wrong. This thought, my thought, once planted would not go away.
Within an hour I had convinced him that he, not I, had overheard that snatch of conversation between Anne and her lover on the telephone. He couldn't be sure whether he'd dreamed it, or whether it had actually happened while he was half-awake. That doubt would not let go of him. I had him.
Towards the end of the afternoon Harold, back from Phoenix, called to ask how he was. He'd heard from Richard's secretary that he was ill and wanted to know if there was anything he could do. Richard almost asked him to come over right then so that he could pour out his wretchedness to the one man he had always trusted. At least Harold would know the name of a discreet private investigator should he need one. But he checked himself and merely mumbled rheumily that he expected to be over the worst by tomorrow.
Would that were true.
Anne seemed unaware of the suspicion in his eyes when she arrived home. She had a sparkle and a glow about her that deepened his depression into a despair. He tossed two effervescent vitamin Cs listlessly into a glass of water and stirred them with a pencil, which Anne took from him, saying that he'd get lead poisoning. She was telling him about her day, but he couldn't bring himself to listen. Too much of it might be lies, and he still couldn't bear to let her lie to him.
That night Anne, at his insistence, slept in the guest room because his wheezing and his coughing and his endless turning would only have kept them both awake. He couldn't face a night-long, sleepless silence between them.
I used the long dark hours to good advantage, filling his fitful sleep with graphic dreams of Anne in strangers' arms (culled from my memories of her times in mine), and his waking hours with the taunting voice of sexual self (or so he thought) mockery at his own inadequacies. The process afforded me no pleasure, but the situation offered no alternative.
By morning Richard A. Hamilton was my surrogate.
As predicted, the worst of the flu was over in twenty-four hours. Richard, however, instead of rushing back to the office as he had intended, decided to spend another day at home to recuperate fully. At least that was the story he told Anne. He also told Agnes that she needn't stay on any later than usual, he would be quite all right alone.
He spent the afternoon in a frantic search for incriminating evidence of Anne's secret life. The backs of shelves, the bottoms of wardrobes, the deepest recesses of her clothes closet, purses, luggage, pockets, bedside tables, bathroom cabinets and kitchen drawers. Nothing. My ingenuity was running out, as his had long since. Only my insistence kept him going. But he was beginning to resist. He wanted to believe he was mistaken, that his suspicions were no more than the product of a flu-ridden, feverish imagination. He was trying to turn his back on the awful doubts that had beset him.
But that, of course, was an impossibility. We can no more ignore doubt than we can pretend we feel no guilt or superstitious fear. It is one of those plants that flourishes without our help, mocking our attempts to stifle, poison, starve, or cut it down. Richard knew that the failure of his search proved nothing — except, perhaps, the carefulness with which she was conducting her affair.
Or affairs, plural. Oh, yes, yes, yes, I still had him by the nose, his bid for freedom swiftly curtailed by the nagging Voice of Jealousy that threatened to follow him wherever he ran.
The next plan was surveillance. If we followed her for, say, a week or two and found her behaviour irreproachable, then even I might be willing to reinterpret what I had heard of that phone call in a more favourable light. Of course I didn't believe for a minute that this would be the case, but the assurance helped Richard get over his scruples about stooping so low as to spy on his wife.
One thing I was determined he should not do was hire an investigator. If I was to maintain and strengthen my hold over him, the last thing I needed was an outside confidant entering his life. I was already doing my best to dissuade him from talking to Harold — on the grounds that he would look a fool if his suspicions did in fact prove to be unfounded. Only if I had him to myself could I achieve what I needed to achieve.
So Richard took to playing detective. He had a dismally feeble imagination, but again I was able to prod him towards some kind of organised plan. Obviously it was impossible single-handedly to mount a twenty-four-hour-a-day surveillance, even though, anyway, at least twelve of those hours were spent in our company. The trick lay in divining through casual conversation, along with the odd furtive dip into her calendar, where she was going to be at different times of day — those endless meetings and committees, workouts and luncheons which were the fabric of her life. Then a phone call to leave a casual message, a drink with an acquaintance who had also been there, a suggestion that he pick her up for dinner at such and such a time and such and such a place — all these little strategies, put together, made it inevitable that very soon any lies she tried to get away with would begin to stand out like fingerprints on glass.
During all this time — about ten days — I was surprised by how well Richard withstood the inevitable stress and strain involved. To say that I felt a hint of admiration for him would be going too far, but I began to suspect that my previous scorn for his lack of moral courage may have been fractionally exaggerated. Outwardly he appeared utterly untroubled. Anne, I am sure, suspected nothing. When they made love — which they did three times during the period in question — he performed faultlessly and, if anything, with slightly more enthusiasm than normal. Only I knew that he had stepped into a porno theatre the previous Thursday and was reliving the main feature with gusto.
In the end, however, the turning-point came with surprising speed. He was just beginning to suspect that this whole thing had been a storm about nothing (and, to be honest, so was I; I was beginning to wonder what new disguise I could adopt after the Voice of Jealousy had been finally and firmly set aside) when all the little red flags that I had planted in his head stood on their ends and quivered.
Nine days earlier Anne had made a strange mark in her diary: 'B.M.', with a line running through the whole of Tuesday afternoon. Normally she wrote down enough to make clear what she was referring to — this committee or that friend, or such and such a restaurant or somebody's house. But 'B.M.' stood unqualified and cryptic in its isolation. Casually over dinner one night he had led the conversation by circuitous routes around to that particular afternoon, and had divined that she had lately been elected to a special steering committee for the forthcoming charity ball in aid of the City War Museum — a great honour, for which he expressed his approval. Naturally he didn't ask what relevance 'B.M.' had to the event, since this would have meant admitting that he had pried into her calendar.
But when the same 'B.M.' appeared again two days later, with yet another line scratched through the afternoon, he knew now that he must verify her story.
This time, in response to his subtle, cautious questioning, she said that she had spent the afternoon with her friend Valerie looking at c
ollections of fall fashions. He didn't know Valerie well enough to call up and check, but he didn't need to. The inconsistency was proof enough. The iron fist of jealousy tightened its grip, and he prepared himself for a final confrontation with the truth.
It came the following Monday. 'B.M.' once more made its appearance in the calendar, accompanied as ever by the firm line announcing the exclusive, all-embracing nature of the rendezvous.
He asked no questions, carefully said nothing to indicate his suspicions . .. and followed her in a rented car, wearing dark glasses and with a hat pulled low over his brow.
Balthazar's Motel was at the upper end of the scale of those establishments advertising X-rated movies and waterbeds. The word 'Adult' winked knowingly in pink neon outside the manager's office.
From his vantage point in the parking lot of the 7-11 across the way, he saw that she had no need of management's assistance in securing a room. She had her own key in her purse and went directly to the door of, he discerned through his binoculars, cabin number nine.
It was, as he had feared, as unlikely a location for a meeting of the steering committee for the War Museum Charity Ball as for a showing of even the most immodest collection of fall fashions.
He waited, his heart palpitating and his breathing shallow, his camera with its long-range lens at the ready on the seat beside him.
Five minutes and forty-eight seconds later another car drew up and parked a few spaces away from Anne's. He recognised the shiny BMW at once. He clutched for a split second at the one last straw of hope: that Harold had lent his car to a colleague or a friend and knew nothing of the perfidious use to which it was being put.
The Man Who Turned Into Himself Page 8