The Man Who Forgot His Wife

by John O'Farrell

  ‘Sssh!’ said a couple of teachers in front of us.

  ‘Sorry!’ I mouthed to them.

  It’s important for a couple to find time to talk to one another, I told myself, however hard the outside world seems determined to make it. I tried to establish how her father’s discovery could be anything other than positive, but every time I whispered loud enough for her to hear, heads would turn and parents would glare.

  ‘But it’s great news. I imagined the whole thing – it never happened …’

  ‘Can you please stop talking!’ came the harsh whisper from behind us.

  There was a round of applause for the end of the song, so Maddy gestured to me to come outside for a minute so we could talk. At that moment Dillie made her big entrance. Just in time to see both her parents getting up and scurrying towards the exit.

  The two of us stood and talked in the school corridor, beside a noticeboard entitled ‘My Inspiration’, where one or two teachers had controversially not chosen Martin Luther King. Pausing whenever we were passed by a hurrying teacher or cast member, I tried to fathom why Maddy was still so cool with me.

  ‘Look, I remember Yolande being at the school, but that’s it. I mean, now it’s like I hardly knew her. But I don’t understand why you aren’t pleased. I didn’t sleep with the French-language assistant!’ The group of teenage girls in grass skirts rushing down the corridor gave me a very strange look as they passed. In my euphoria I gestured to hug Maddy, but she did not accept the invitation.

  ‘So why,’ she asked accusingly, ‘did you imagine you had an affair with this Yolande woman?’

  ‘I don’t know – ask the neurologist! Oh, you’re not going to hold it against me that I imagined I had sex with another woman, are you? That’s every male in the known universe …’

  ‘I don’t care who you imagine you have sex with.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Vaughan,’ said one of Jamie’s friends, dressed in a sailor costume.

  ‘Hello, Danny. The first question is, did you imagine you had sex with Yolande because you fancied her?’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Vaughan!’

  ‘Hello, Ade. Well, did you?’

  ‘What?! No!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘This isn’t fair. I’ve just discovered that I’m an innocent man but with a brain that’s still playing tricks on me, and you’re giving me a hard time because of something I didn’t actually do.’

  ‘But did you fancy Yolande the French-language assistant?’

  ‘Yes, of course I fancied Yolande. Everyone did – she was gorgeous.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What’s more pathetic is that my subconscious believed that a stunning young thing like Yolande would ever have an affair with an old fart like me! It’s ridiculous – how could I have been so gullible as to believe my own brain?’

  At that moment, the double doors of the hall burst open and the audience swept towards the school dining room where the catering students would be selling interval drinks and chunks of disintegrating pastry. Maddy and I went through with the rest of the crowd, feeling mortified when someone congratulated us on Dillie’s wonderful performance.

  ‘Very impressive set, I thought,’ said Maddy, pointedly, in earshot of the head of art.

  ‘So are you going to come home?’ I demanded. ‘Are we going to be a whole family again?’

  ‘And the costumes! What a lot of effort must have gone into that.’

  ‘Maddy – come home with me, Jamie and Dillie tonight. They’ve really missed you. I miss you.’

  ‘Do you want an orange squash?’

  ‘No, I do not want a bloody orange squash. You were all set to give our relationship another go, we made a big public thing of it, until I tried to be honest about something that had happened in the past. Well, now you’ve got the best of both worlds: I wasn’t unfaithful, but you know I’d tell you if I had been.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘It is as simple as that. You walked out because I had an affair. Now it turns out I didn’t have an affair. So surely at that point you just come back again—’

  ‘Didn’t Dillie look fantastic up there? You must be very proud,’ said a teacher I didn’t recognize.

  ‘Oh yes, she loves performing. Thank you!’

  ‘And Jamie in the band as well! What a great night for the Vaughan family!’

  ‘Well, let’s see how it turns out …’ I said, more pointedly than I had intended.

  ‘It such a great musical, isn’t it?’ said Maddy, grateful that the teacher was still there. ‘Great songs!’

  ‘Oh yes, wonderful songs.’

  ‘Yeah, tell me, Maddy, which number do you prefer?’ I asked. ‘“I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” or “I’m In Love With A Wonderful Guy”?’

  The teacher hovered politely to see the outcome of this interesting question.

  ‘Oh, I’d say the best song is yet to come. “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”.’

  ‘Good answer!’ said the teacher.

  Other families we half knew came and joined us, and I was frustrated that I didn’t get another chance to talk with her before the second act. Madeleine seemed to be deliberately chatting with another mother as we returned to our seats, and stubbornly refused to talk about our future happiness throughout ‘Happy Talk’. Finally, during the applause, I grabbed my opportunity.

  ‘You said the first question is did I fancy Yolande. What was the second question?’

  She was about to frame an answer when the applause stopped and she put her palm up and mouthed, ‘Hang on …’ and I had to wait until the end of the next song to get a response.

  ‘Why did your mind need to create a false memory?’ she finally said above the noise of the clapping and whistling. I was about to give my instant reaction, but the hall fell quiet again and she gestured for me to wait. So now I had time to frame a carefully judged response. I could analyse the question, think about the best answer, then floor her with my brilliantly worded reply.

  ‘I dunno,’ I said.

  ‘Because at some deep level, you don’t want to commit. Your brain invented a reason not to be with me because it doesn’t want to be with me.’

  ‘But—’

  She put her fingers to her lips as the room fell quiet again. All the way through ‘This Was Nearly Mine’ I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it. My memory was like some random in voluntary muscle: completely out of control, acting independently, wiping files, making up stuff, while I was held to account for the way it was trashing my past and future.

  ‘But I do want to be with you. This is my brain talking too. I want to be with you, okay? In sickness and in mental health. Remember our wedding vows.’

  ‘Yeah. Except we got divorced …’

  Now Dillie was on stage again and both of us made a big show of craning our necks and making sure she could see us in the audience. We clapped loudly and I whistled and cheered, then realized I had lost my chance to reply to Maddy’s killer argument.

  Only at the end of the play did we really have another opportunity to talk at any length. During the standing ovation and repeated curtain calls, while we waved enthusiastically to our two children on stage, we tried to work out whether their mum and dad were going to stay together.

  ‘I really don’t know what I think,’ sighed Maddy. ‘I thought we had worked it all out and then you went and pulled a stunt like that.’

  ‘You can’t blame me for that. I have a neurological condition.’

  ‘You have a psychological condition. And your psyche doesn’t want you to be with me. That will manifest itself sooner or later, and I’m not going through all that again.’

  ‘This is so unfair.’ I had stopped clapping now and was just standing there looking at her. ‘I want you back home, okay? Believe me, not my lying, broken memory banks. I want you back home, the kids want you back home, I didn’t sleep with anyone else, and now you know you can trust me to tell you if I
ever do. What else do I have to do?’

  ‘Dillie’s waving – wave back!’

  I waved at my daughter, then gave two thumbs-ups to Jamie.

  ‘Oh, God, I don’t know,’ sighed Maddy. ‘I spoke to the lawyers before this false-memory stuff came up. Under the terms of the divorce, you have to vacate the house and I have to allow you access to the children every weekend. They’re waiting for me to direct them to instruct you or something.’

  ‘No, Maddy, think about it. Give us another chance.’

  ‘Look, we can’t put the kids through another break-up. I’ll go back to Mum and Dad’s and I’ll be in touch, okay?’

  That night Dillie went to bed later than normal, and I tucked her up like I used to when she was little. ‘Why did you and Mum walk out just as I came on stage?’

  ‘Oh dear, you saw that, did you? I’m very sorry we weren’t there for your big debut. But it was because we were trying to sort out whether we’re both going to be there all the rest of the time.’

  ‘What did you decide?’ said Jamie, standing at his sister’s bedroom doorway.

  ‘Oh, hi, Jamie. Well, we aren’t sure yet. We’re both going to be in your lives a lot. It’s just whether we do it together or apart.’

  ‘Can we have some crisps?’

  ‘Look, just because you know I’m feeling guilty about missing Dillie’s debut and Mum not being here and everything, you think I’m going to be a soft touch for junk food after you’ve both brushed your teeth. Well … there’s a big cheese-and-onion grab bag in the cupboard.’

  The next day the kids went to school and I called in sick. I waited for the phone, running to answer every call, then gasping for breath as I told the insurance salesman from Bangalore that I really wasn’t interested. Late that night I jumped out of bed at the sound of a taxi pulling up outside, only to see Anonymous Cravat Man and his wife staggering towards their front door. I really should have taken the trouble to find out his name by now. For two days I waited for any message from Maddy. I had sent her a long email listing all the reasons why I felt that we should be together, but heard nothing back. I didn’t dare leave the house in case she came round, and the stir-crazy dog barked and stared at the front door. The longer the silence went on, the more pessimistic I became.

  Her response finally came in the only form I had not considered. It arrived by post. On the third day, a solitary letter landed face up on the doormat and in that moment I feared the worst. A formal letter, addressed to me, from her lawyer: that could only be an official instruction to vacate the house and adhere to the terms of the divorce.

  I looked at the family shoes and coats in the hallway. One of Maddy’s coats was still on the hook, and Jamie and Dillie’s shoes were lined up beside their mother’s. Up the stairs were framed black-and-white photos of the children: Jamie with his sister on her very first day at school, taking her hand as he led her out of the gate; the two of them a few years older standing on the beach looking sea-washed and salty; and there was Maddy holding both of them when they were tiny, one in either arm, laughing at the camera, innocently unaware that it would indeed just be her and the two kids in years to come. The optimism of this image seemed so ridiculous. I summoned up memories of Maddy and me laughing together on a rowing boat on the Serpentine; of Maddy rocking our sleeping child; now I could see her excitedly waving at me from the window of a National Express coach when she’d returned to university and I’d been waiting for her at the station.

  I was not sure where exactly I wanted to be when I opened this emotional letter bomb. I took it into the kitchen, but decided I didn’t want to read it there. I wandered into the lounge and then back to the hallway. I held the letter up to the light, but the envelope was too expensive to see through. And finally I ripped it open to have my fate confirmed to me.

  Inside there was no letter from the lawyers. Just a tatty green postcard featuring a cartoon leprechaun saying ‘Top o’ the mornin’ to yers!!’

  Chapter 25

  ‘SHE’S BEAUTIFUL; SHE’S absolutely perfect!’ I said, looking at the newborn baby in Maddy’s arms, or possibly at Maddy, I never actually specified.

  ‘Would you like to hold her, Vaughan?’ suggested Linda, from the hospital bed, and with a nostalgic smile Madeleine passed the baby over to her partner, as Gary and Linda proudly looked on.

  ‘Can I take a photo of her with my phone?’ asked Dillie, and Linda said that was fine.

  ‘Did you want to take a picture as well, Jamie?’ I said, noticing that my son was fiddling with his mobile.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you want to take a picture of Gary and Linda’s baby?’

  ‘Not right now. I’m playing Angry Birds.’

  Linda’s birth plan had specified her wish to have a more traditional birthing experience, which Gary had taken as his cue to play it like a 1950s husband and remain in the pub the entire evening. He only just made it in time after a call from an extremely tetchy midwife, who, Gary claimed, had been grumpy whatever he did. ‘Put that cigarette out!’ she had barked at him. ‘This is a hospital!’

  ‘It’s not a cigarette, it’s a joint. Surely if it’s a special occasion …’

  But now, incredibly, here the new baby was. And here was Maddy with our own children, marvelling at the miracle of a whole new life.

  ‘Isn’t it amazing, Jamie? A perfect new person who will see the world with completely fresh eyes—’

  ‘Yes!’ exclaimed Jamie, enthusiastically, not looking up from his screen. ‘High score!!’

  I looked into the unfocused eyes of the tiny baby, feeling some sort of vague affinity with this new arrival. And Maddy smiled as she looked at the baby staring up in the direction of her newborn man. I randomly suggested that she had her mother’s eyes and her father’s chin. I couldn’t actually discern any physical similarities in this scrunched-up little red face, but it was the sort of thing that you were supposed to say, and nobody bothered to contradict me.

  ‘Does it take you back to when you first held our two?’ said Maddy.

  ‘God, yeah, I’ll never forget that—’

  ‘Again …’ heckled Jamie, without looking up.

  Linda took the baby back and went to breastfeed her, and, struggling with the etiquette of this situation, I pointedly fixed Gary directly in my gaze and asked him if he was planning to do any late-night feeds with the bottle.

  ‘It depends whether Linda is able to express enough. We don’t want to use formula milk when obviously breast is best for Baby.’

  ‘He said “best for Baby”,’ I thought. No definite article. They’ve got him too. And soon after that an attractive nurse approached to check Linda’s charts and Gary’s gaze did not wander one millimetre from his wife and child.

  ‘Shall I take Baby?’ suggested Gary.

  ‘The baby,’ said Jamie.

  ‘Oh, we brought you a present,’ I remembered.

  ‘You didn’t need to do that …’

  ‘We were going to pay for a newly discovered star to be named after her, but it turns out that’s an expensive con.’

  ‘Unless you do it the other way round and just call the baby “Beta J153259-1”.’

  Linda gave a little shake of the head, as if this was not one of the names they were considering. Gary ripped open the paper to reveal a specially commissioned family tree, surrounded by various photos of the baby’s parents and grandparents and with an empty space for her own image right at the bottom.

  ‘Wow – look at that! That’s really kind of you!’

  ‘Well, after all you’ve done for us over the past year …’

  ‘Hey, forget about it. Sorry, I mean, “Don’t mention it” … Wow, look at that – my great-great-grandfather was an internet technician as well!’

  ‘Really?’ said Linda.

  ‘No – it says here he was a draper. How do they find out all this stuff?’

  ‘It’s all in the Public Records Office.’

  ‘Or else they just m
ake it all up and hope you won’t check!’ joked Maddy, and it occurred to me that this was, in fact, perfectly possible.

  ‘It’s a present for the whole family, really,’ I continued. ‘Your history is important. Where you come from, what went before … you know, it sort of defines who you are.’

  ‘Look at that picture of you at college!’ said Linda. ‘And who’s that blonde tart leaning all over you?’

  ‘Er, and all the pictures are interchangeable,’ added Maddy, quickly.

  We left Gary and Linda to make the disappointing discovery that none of Baby’s ancestors had gone down with the Titanic or been hanged for horse-stealing and we headed home.

  Family life had quickly reverted to normality after Maddy had returned. The children found it slightly irritating that their parents were so obviously trying really hard to be nice to one another, and shouted, ‘Get a room!’ every time we so much as cuddled one another. But on a deeper level they obviously appreciated having both their father and their mother around, to remind them to get off the computer and do their homework, to tell them to tidy their rooms and clear the dinner table and walk the dog and put their clothes in the washing basket. It was just at such a profound level that the children wouldn’t have realized quite how much they appreciated it.

  But Madeleine and I hadn’t just got back together for the sake of our kids. Maddy told me she’d realized that I was, in fact, ‘the light of her life’. I was momentarily amazed to hear her being this romantic, until she added, ‘Okay, so the light flickers a bit these days, and the fuses keep going, and the bulbs don’t last five minutes, but frankly I can’t be bothered to get another bloody light now.’ I’m sure what she was trying to say was that relationships evolve, marriages ebb and flow, and you just have to keep working at them, adjusting your hopes and expectations but never taking one another for granted. As long as you try to see things from your partner’s perspective occasionally, and don’t forget to get her a card for your divorce anniversary, you should get by.

  Despite our kids’ outwardly confident and contented manner, I still worried about how much they might have been affected by our original break-up. Every self-help book and parenting guide I read alluded to the notion that, at some level, children will blame themselves for a parental split. However much her courtiers tried to reassure her, Queen Elizabeth I would still say, ‘But I’m sure Dad would never have beheaded Mum if I’d been a boy …’ I’d been particularly worried about how Jamie might react to the reunion. I was still haunted by his outburst at the swimming pool, and the look of fury that he had given me when his mother had run out in tears at our supposedly ironic divorce party.