The Man Who Forgot His Wife

by John O'Farrell

  ‘Great, well, what about this weekend? Arabella was just saying we hadn’t seen much of you and we’re not doing anything on Saturday.’

  ‘Ah no, Saturday … Saturday evening’s not good …’

  ‘Lunch then?’

  Without even knowing him or his wife, I could already sense that the bitterness of my marital break-up would not be ameliorated by committing Maddy and myself to a dinner party with these neighbours.

  ‘Er, it’s a bit difficult at the moment, actually. Maddy and I are getting … erm, well, I think we’re going to be a bit preoccupied for a while …’ His silence demanded more details. ‘Well – we’re having a trial separation.’

  ‘A trial separation?’

  ‘Yeah, you know … and a trial divorce. Just to see how that goes for a while …’

  At least this embarrassing news cut the conversation short. The neighbour put down his drink and came into the shed himself, where it turned out the thing I had come round to collect was right under my nose all the time. ‘Silly me!’ I tutted.

  Ten minutes later I was standing on a busy underground train, noticing that people were giving me more space than might usually be expected. Perhaps it was the three-foot-long serrated blade of the electric hedge trimmer I was clutching. It was too heavy to carry back to Gary and Linda’s, so I had made the brave decision to take public transport. I attempted a faint smile at a nervous-looking mother, who then moved her children further down the carriage. I affected to carry the unwieldy weapon as if I was barely even aware that I was holding it, as if I often travelled on the tube during rush hour with a yard of sharpened steel teeth in my right hand. A couple of hoodies were eyeing me warily. ‘Respect!’ muttered one, as he got off at the next stop.

  Chapter 7

  I FELT AS if I had stared at my bedroom clock for an entire night. Lying there, in the half-light of the nursery, everything was quiet and completely still except for the manic pendulum on the wall opposite. It featured a happy clown clinging on to a rainbow, swinging back and forth, for ever. His situation still seemed to make more sense than my own. By about half past three it became clear that the clown was not going to take a rest, so I got up and tiptoed into the kitchen for a glass of water.

  When dawn came it would be the day of my court case. I sat at the pine table for a while, listening to the rhythmical dripping of the tap. I looked at the cooker. Did people still kill themselves by putting their heads in ovens, I wondered, or would that not work with an electric fan oven? There were little informative images beside the various settings – a fish, a chicken, but no picture of a depressed person’s head. Pinned on the noticeboard by the fridge was a telephone bill. ‘Have you updated your Friends and Family?’ it asked. I spotted Gary and Linda’s address book and I started to flick through the pages. ‘Vaughan and Maddy’ was filed under ‘V’, neatly typed, with the address set out underneath. Then a green biro had crossed my name out and scrawled a new address sideways down the margin. That had subsequently been crossed out and then another address scribbled in blue underneath that, which was so squeezed in, it was virtually illegible. No one had planned for any separate space for ‘Vaughan’ on this page; it just ruined everything. There was my family’s telephone number glaring at me from the yellowing paper, a series of digits that I must have effortlessly recited a thousand times. I could just dial that number right now and talk to Maddy. Although ringing up my ex-wife at half past three in the morning might not be the best way to reassure her of my sanity.

  My personal effects had been rediscovered in a jacket pocket at the bottom of a bag of clothes and now, seated at the kitchen table, I carefully dealt out the cards from my wallet like some sort of sociological Tarot reader. ‘That’s the Blockbuster video card. It represents stability and culture – a sign that you might be the sort of person who would own a DVD player and enjoy renting movies. Combined as it is with a Lambeth Library Services card and a Clapham Picturehouse membership, this sequence suggests that you are quite a cultured person, although of course there is no card from the British Film Institute or Friends of the National Theatre. The Virgin Active Gym card would at first suggest that you are a health enthusiast, except you have to look at how the card is lying. It was actually stuck inside the wallet with the embossed numbers having imprinted their shape into the leather pocket, suggesting it has never actually been used. In terms of wealth, there is only one basic credit card, not a series of high-status gold or platinum cards. But on the plus side, your Caffè Nero loyalty card shows that you are only two stamps away from a free cappuccino …’

  I took a pen and a notepad and attempted to copy the signature on my bank cards. I could produce nothing even vaguely similar. My phone was completely out of battery, which had been something of a relief to me. I had been frightened by the idea that people could just ring me up; that names would flash urgently on the screen, expecting to pick up where they had left off with me and I would know nothing at all about them. But now, under cover of darkness, I plugged it in and watched the screen come back to life. I had forty-seven missed calls and seventeen messages. I scrolled through my contacts, reading the cast list of the play in which I was about to make my entrance. I tore off a clean sheet of paper and prepared to write down all their names and what they wanted.

  I didn’t recognize the first caller. ‘Vaughan, hi, it’s me, there’s a curriculum problem I need you to sort out. I’ve spoken to Jules and Mike, and if you could check the rota for Day 6—’ And then I stopped it and just pressed ‘Delete All’.

  I rested my forehead on the kitchen table for a while and thought about the ordeal of the day ahead. The court case had not been postponed because I had never been assertive enough to insist that Maddy or my lawyer was informed about my condition. Gary had maintained that we were definitely doing the right thing, and that my life could begin again once this ‘last little formality’ was out of the way. I was to learn the hard way about the wisdom of taking legal advice from a man with an earring.

  I was woken by the sound of some crockery being placed on the kitchen table beside my head.

  ‘Sorry to wake you there, Vaughan, mate. I’m just doing breakfast. Do you want any prawn balls?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘With sweet and sour sauce. And some special fried rice, though it’s a bit less special than it was a couple of days ago, to be honest.’

  The microwave gave out a beep and Gary bit into a reheated spring roll.

  ‘Er – no, thanks. What time is it?’

  ‘It’s getting on a bit, actually. You’re supposed to be in court in an hour – although you might want to iron the creases out of your face first.’

  Gary observed that I wasn’t as laid back as I used to be. He felt there was no need to run from the underground station to the court. ‘Relax, they’re not going to start without you, are they?’ I still had no idea just how bad a husband I had been. Thankfully, as I approached the courtroom steps there was no angry mob surging forward against police barricades, spitting and shouting, ‘Bastard!’ as a grey blanket was put over my head.

  ‘Vaughan! There you are!’ said a posh young man with a voice even louder than his tie. ‘I thought you wanted to meet a bit earlier?’

  ‘Are you Vaughan’s lawyer?’ said Gary. ‘We spoke on the phone yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, hello. So, Vaughan, according to your friend here you wanted to go through all the questions likely to come up in court, so that you know what you should say?’ He made this sound like a bizarre request.

  ‘Er, that’s right. Yes.’

  ‘Again,’ he said pointedly.

  ‘Again?’ I asked, without checking myself.

  ‘Well, that’s exactly what we did last time I saw you. And we’re not supposed to do that in any case.’

  ‘Er, Vaughan said that was incredibly useful,’ interjected Gary, ‘but when I was just doing a final, final rehearsal with him, it turned out that he was a little confused about one or two minor aspects of it
, weren’t you, mate?’

  ‘I see,’ said the lawyer, opening his leather file. ‘We haven’t got long. Which particular areas would you like me to go over again?’

  I looked forlornly at Gary, hoping that he might have the words to answer this. He didn’t. ‘Well, the whole, general sort of area of the whole thing, really … you know. Getting divorced? That bit.’

  I found it difficult to concentrate when I was looking over his shoulder to see if I could spot Maddy coming in.

  ‘As I say, I’m afraid Mrs Vaughan is being incredibly unreasonable,’ commented the lawyer on one of the minor points of contention relating to our financial settlement.

  ‘Well, there are two sides to everything,’ I interjected. ‘I mean, her lawyer probably thinks I’m being incredibly unreasonable too.’

  He seemed to be pulled up short by this comment. ‘Well, Mr Vaughan, I must say you seem to have mellowed in your feelings somewhat.’

  Gary was anxious that my attitude did not arouse suspicions. ‘I think with the actual divorce so close, you’re already preparing for the next psychological stage, aren’t you, mate? Forgiveness, reconciliation, cooperation. It’s all in Divorce for Dummies.’

  ‘I haven’t read that one,’ said the lawyer. ‘I don’t think it was in the Bodleian.’

  The lawyer had never actually told us his name, so I found myself saying things like ‘what our colleague here is saying’; ‘going back to the earlier point made by our esteemed lawyer friend here’. Plus I was still looking out for the beautiful woman I was divorcing, and so the patter of unfamiliar legalese became just incidental background noise as I drifted in and out of concentration.

  ‘So you’re completely clear about the CETV?’ he said.

  ‘What? Oh, er, almost completely …’ I stuttered. ‘Will the judge ask me what that stands for?’

  ‘No! The Cash Equivalent Transfer Value is the valuation technique both parties have agreed to pursue with regard to the pension.’

  ‘I knew that …’

  ‘The difficulty being that Maddy is demanding half.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable,’ I commented cheerfully. His stunned silence went on for so long I was worried the extra time would be added on to my bill. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Vaughan, but we have been absolutely adamant on this point up till now.’

  ‘See, mate, you paid nearly all of the contributions into the pension,’ interjected Gary, ‘so you didn’t see why she should receive half of it.’

  ‘But if she was looking after the kids or whatever, how could she pay any money in? She was making, like, a non-cash contribution, wasn’t she?’

  ‘That is the point that her lawyer will be making. But one of the reasons you are having to go to court is because you don’t agree with what you just said.’

  ‘I don’t?’

  ‘No, you don’t. We have consistently agreed that she could have worked when the children were young if she had wanted to, but that she chose not to.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s a difficult one, isn’t it?’ I mused philosophically, pressing my index fingers together. ‘I mean, was there a genuine choice? Deep down, you know? If I was working so hard at my job – teachers’ bureaucracy, staff meetings, marking, cleaning the blackboard … do teachers still do that? – perhaps all that closed off the possibility of her resuming any meaningful career after we had children.’

  My lawyer pressed his fingers to his temples as if he had suddenly developed a powerful headache, and his exasperation seemed to increase as I went on to question the pre-arranged position on the division of the house and the custody of the children. ‘I just think we are pursuing a rather hard-line and unreasonable stance.’

  ‘This is the Divorce Court, Mr Vaughan, not Disneyland. You either fight your corner or you get utterly destroyed.’

  The lawyer insisted that there was no alternative but to proceed on the basis already agreed, and Gary pointed out that if I won, I’d look all the more generous to Maddy if I didn’t insist on all the court’s terms. But I was alarmed at some of the stands adopted by my former self. To solve the practical problems of my demand that I have custody of the children, my lawyer had suggested that the kids move schools to the comprehensive where I was a teacher. Gary drew breath at that one.

  ‘I’m not sure you want to do that to them, mate …’ Now it seemed wrong to want to cause further disruption to the children’s lives; I couldn’t understand the thinking of the Vaughan who had previously gone along with this. Finding out more and more about myself was like peeling an onion. And the more I peeled away the layers, the more I felt like crying.

  ‘Right, shall we go in?’ suggested the lawyer before I complicated things any further. I discovered that Gary would not be allowed in the courtroom, and so I alone was solemnly escorted to the innermost chamber where marriages went to die.

  The courtroom itself was smaller and more modern than I had anticipated; nothing like the great oak-panelled room that had been planted in my subconscious by climactic trial scenes in forgotten TV dramas. It smelt of furniture polish and new carpet tiles, and on the wall hung an old portrait of the Queen to remind divorcing couples that there were always families more dys-functional than their own. We were joined by a pupil barrister and then a solicitor and trainee, and eventually Maddy and her team bustled in and placed themselves at the parallel bench. I felt my insides fizzing as I saw her again and I leaned over and attempted a smile, but she had clearly decided that our final divorce hearing was not the occasion for friendly little waves across the room. Her lawyer mumbled at her for several minutes and she listened in intense concentration, only glancing up once, accidentally making eye contact with me and then quickly looking away. She was wearing a smart dark jacket and skirt, with a plain white blouse underneath. ‘That’s exactly what you should wear for a divorce hearing,’ I thought. Well, if you were a woman, anyway. Though if you wore that when you were a man, at least the judge might have an idea why the marriage had failed. I was troubled by how little Maddy seemed able to smile. Of course I understood that this was not a happy occasion, but I still found myself wanting to make her feel better. As it turned out, my performance in court was to have exactly the opposite effect.

  As the judge entered the room, I was struck by the fact that he was not wearing the traditional headpiece. ‘Oh, no wig!’ I heard myself blurt out. The judge heard and looked at me. Now I was suddenly worried that he was in fact wearing a toupee, and that saying ‘no wig’ might not have been the best way to get on his good side.

  ‘Divorce judges don’t wear wigs, Vaughan – it’s not Open Court,’ my lawyer whispered. And we both attempted a polite smile at the judge, but my willpower was not quite strong enough to hold eye contact with him and I glanced momentarily at the top of his lushly carpeted head.

  There then followed some procedural overtures that I hoped might help the judge forget about our poor start before the hearing began in earnest. It was as if he and the two lawyers were performing some sort of secret coded mumbling game, in which the judge would say something incomprehensible and the lawyers would have to go through the charade of muttering back the unfathomable but presumably correct answer. They might as well have been discussing the transformations of Pokémon characters.

  ‘Counsel for the petitioner? Jigglypuff evolves into?’

  ‘Jigglypuff turns into Wigglytuff, m’lud.’

  ‘Let the record show that Jigglypuff’s evolve is Wigglytuff. Counsel for the respondent, Pikachu becomes?’

  ‘Pikachu transforms into Raichu, m’lud. Via the use of the Thunder Stone.’

  I gradually understood that they were establishing the stages of the divorce process so far, the areas of agreement and divergence, during which I found my eye wandering back to the other half I hadn’t known I’d had. She was looking straight ahead, vacant and unemotional, listening to the protracted history of our separation and just enduring the ordeal; coping alone, waiting to move on from there. I so wanted to make this eas
ier for her, to make that blank expression crack into a smile.

  The previous night I had worked hard to think of every possible question that might be thrown at me if I had to take the stand. My trainer Gary had said I should go into court feeling confident and completely in control. ‘This is only for insurance, mate. I’m pretty certain you won’t have to say anything at all. There’s just a load of special phrases and that, and then at the end you just have to agree by saying “amen” or something.’

  ‘That’s church.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Not “amen”. It’s “not guilty” or something. “The ayes have it!” I’m sure you’ll pick it up once you’re in there.’

  I was wishing that he could be in there just to see how very wrong he had been. Right at the beginning they caught me out with a trick question that it was completely unreasonable to expect me to know.

  ‘Could you state your full name, please?’

  ‘Oh! My full name?’ I stammered. ‘Do you mean with, like, middle names and everything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ooh, erm … let me see … Well, I’m Jack Vaughan, though everyone calls me Vaughan, but my full name … my full, complete, legal name with the middle name … or names, well, that would be … Mister … Jack – sorry, I’ve gone blank, help me out here, er, lawyer person, sorry, I’ve forgotten your name as well, actually …’

  The whole room was now staring at me as if I had decided to come to court completely naked, which I knew I hadn’t because the tie around my neck felt as if it was slowly tightening. ‘Bit nervous, sorry.’

  My lawyer gazed at me uncertainly, perplexed by this mystery new tactic. ‘Well, your full name, is er, well, it will be on the original submission. I didn’t think to check you knew that – it’s in these papers I think – hang on, not this pile, the other one …’

  ‘It’s Jack Joseph Neil Vaughan,’ recited Maddy, in a tone suggesting years of exasperation with the uselessness of the man she was divorcing.