by Zaza, Agatha
He’d told himself that Jasper was the only person he could tell. Constantly maintaining the façade of normalcy was a crushing weight on his shoulders, and he’d had to admit he was floundering.
Completely against his nature, he’d found himself snapping at his work colleagues. His PA found herself constantly put upon and repeatedly reprimanded, and that morning she’d appeared, her eyes red and her face etched with fatigue. He’d scolded her the previous evening. He could barely recall what he’d said, accusing her of laziness and of not performing her best.
He would confess to Jasper, about Ovidia and how he’d found himself at this point. Perhaps Jasper would forgive him.
How would he begin? Because he was so much older, their childhoods had only barely overlapped. When Jasper said his first words and took his first steps, it had been at Edmund’s urging. Jasper had been someone he cared for, entertained, and educated. Of course he loved his brother, but their relationship was unlike those of brothers who were two or three years apart.
When Edmund was fifteen, Jasper had been nine, much too young to confide in as Edmund had navigated his teenage years. As a teenager, Edmund had taken his brother on adventures tramping through mud and up hills and instigated pranks against their parents, grandparents, and neighbours with his little brother in tow; but the joy had not been in the activity but in the sound of Jasper squealing in laughter or hopping up and down with joy as he tried to recount his latest exploits.
Edmund’s first girlfriend, their fumbled first night, the awkward holding of cold clammy hands; feeling ill each morning when, for the first time in his life, he found himself failing in academia — yet refusing to give it up because he would not accept his own failure; looking at himself in a mirror at his adolescent face and body and cursing what he saw as ugly and thin; and making the tactical decision to be ‘the guy who always buys you a drink’ so that he’d be invited out by the in-crowd at the office, knowing that he didn’t have looks or a sense of style that he could rely on to attract people toward him. These were things he’d never told Jasper. What Jasper had seen was the stellar A-levels and university distinctions, the skyward trajectory of his career beginning with his first job — not Edmund teaching himself to dress well from a cache of magazine page cut-outs or saving money to have his teeth straightened.
Edmund had opened the restaurant door exactly on time and looked around. He’d seen Jasper. He’d watched Jasper’s silhouette as he tapped on his phone. Despite how his breakup with Ovidia had ravaged his body, he was still a handsome man. He was still young and had shown remarkable resilience, but had he recovered enough to deal with a new shock?
Jasper had looked up and smiled, relaxed. Edmund had strolled towards, grunted hello, and sat down.
‘What’s up?’ Jasper had asked, as a waiter arrived beside him.
‘Nothing much,’ Edmund had replied spontaneously, his voice stronger. ‘Work mostly.’
16
Ovidia remembered that first week with a flutter in her stomach. It had been a long time since she’d thought about that period. She’d lain on a bench watching him through the gap between her face and her elbow. She’d turned a few times, craning her neck, watching the race organisers dismantle their banners and water tables, and pack their uncollected goodie bags. She’d thought about the last twelve hours that she’d spent running and a thought occurred to her — how would she train for such long periods if she had a partner?
The thought had caused her to flinch. It wasn’t the first time in that year that she’d wondered how she would ever date again or what kind of man would have her, but, as she smiled apologetically as her foot hit his knee, a man no longer seemed an impossibility.
Ovidia found Edmund’s resemblance to Jasper in his hair and skin colour, his nose and his eyes, but, she decided, it wasn’t strong enough to explain her attraction to him. She evaluated him physically and remembered that he was not that much older than her. When she was younger, five years would have seemed like an immense gap, but then, at thirty-eight, it didn’t seem as much. Edmund’s clothes told her that he’d bought them all at once, probably following a list of what he wanted and needed. Sombre colours, every item from a single brand ensuring that everything matched and was of equal quality. Ovidia deduced that Edmund was the type that planned and executed tasks with precision. As she’d lain on the bench, she’d waited for him to leave, even claiming she had recovered when she quite clearly hadn’t.
She’d spent that week vacillating between the euphoria of what looked like love and a niggling dissatisfaction caused by lying to herself, repeating to herself that history didn’t matter. Did she have the right to be as happy as she was in the mornings that she woke beside him?
She’d found herself singing in the bathroom, and she’d stopped, uncertain. Her voice sounded odd to her own ears. How long had it been since she laughed or sang uninhibited? A moment later, as she’d folded her towel, she began singing again, and this time she didn’t stop herself.
Edmund’s phone had beeped at intervals with angry messages, missed calls, and unanswered emails reminding them of his life, whereas hers stayed silent except for a few messages congratulating her on her run. She’d discovered that parts of him were the antithesis of his dark clothes and restrained demeanour. He would happily help her pick out an orange vintage dress, even though he himself rejected any attempt to add colour to his wardrobe. He could make her laugh uncontrollably with only the slightest of smiles on his own face. As they’d sat in a café in Paris, a man in pale chinos with freckled skin and red hair appeared, greeting them with a firm handshake and unable to keep his eyes from repeatedly flitting from Edmund to Ovidia and back again as if he was hoping for more information other than ‘this is Ovidia’.
He’d left after talking to Edmund for a few minutes, drilling him on the latest news from the industry. They’d had a brief but intense discussion, but Edmund had ended it with a firm, ‘I’m off work for now, so I’m not quite up to speed. Catch up with you when I’m back at work.’
‘When will that be?’ The man had pulled out his phone, probably to key in the date.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Edmund had replied, and the man had looked nothing short of shocked.
‘Well, call when you can,’ he’d stammered, then he’d seized Ovidia’s hand and shook it saying, ‘Yellow. If you can get this man away from work, you can get him to wear yellow.’
They’d watched him leave, and Edmund had said, ‘The two have nothing to do with each other.’
When Edmund had returned to work, he’d phoned her up after his director had apologised for saying he was fired and the question Ovidia had been asking herself — What are you doing with this man? — was answered. Somewhere underneath his demeanour was an underlying silliness, a man who was up for an escapade, an adventure — a man who had his passions but kept them obscured in greys and dark blues.
‘Got my job back after half an hour of unemployment.’ She could hear the laughter in his voice when he’d called her after the dressing down from his director.
‘Edmund, you could have said you had to go back to work,’ Ovidia had said quietly.
‘I didn’t have to do anything of the sort,’ he’d replied, chuckling. ‘I worked hard to get to where I can skive off work when I want.’
Ovidia hadn’t replied. Holding her mobile, her breathing had become heavy and laden with anxiety.
‘We need to talk, don’t we?’ Edmund had said.
She’d nodded, though they were on the phone.
‘I think I’m serious about you. But, I guess you’re not sure about me,’ he’d continued.
‘I’ve been thinking about it all morning,’ Ovidia had replied. ‘We’re pretending everything is all right. We have to be honest with ourselves … I think.’
‘I’m perfectly happy lying to myself,’ he’d replied, his voice taut. ‘If it means getting to stay with you.’
‘But what if I …’ she’d asked.
‘I won’t let you,’ he’d cut her off. ‘You won’t have to worry as long as you’re with me.’
‘It’s not about letting me. What about …’ she’d hesitated; Jasper’s name hadn’t been used all that week. ‘What will we tell him?’
‘Nothing.’ From his tone, Ovidia had known he’d already made a decision. ‘This has nothing to do with him. The two of you can never be together again; he knows that.’ Edmund had paused. ‘Are you still there?’ he’d asked when she was silent. ‘In the worst-possible-case scenario, we’ll run away. New York, Singapore, Cape Town …’
‘I can’t run away from myself,’ she’d replied. She’d searched for excuses. ‘And what about my family, what about my career?’
‘What about me?’ Edmund had pressed the word ‘me’. ‘I know I must sound like a wet blanket right now, but I’m not willing to lose you just to keep everyone else happy. I’m a decent man, aren’t I? I take care of my family. I make money for my company. I’ve never broken a law in my life. I am as entitled to love as anyone else.’ He’d sworn. ‘And now I seem pathetic and desperate.’
‘I should have got you on tape. I could play it back to our kids,’ she’d stopped, realising the idea had slipped out too easily.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Edmund had said quietly. ‘What if we just break up, take the safe option, like choosing the colour of my next suit?’
Ovidia had smiled, though he couldn’t see her. ‘Grey, navy, or charcoal?’
‘Fool-proof system. Every item in my wardrobe matches,’ he’d replied and Ovidia had giggled. ‘But all we’ll have to look forward to is life in shades of grey.’
His voice had lowered almost to a whisper. ‘We have a choice. We can rush headlong into a really stupid idea or go back to being alone. You make me sick with happiness. I’ll never find anyone like you again.’
‘And you have to understand that I never want to go through that again,’ Ovidia had replied, clamping her eyes shut and reaching out for support and finding nothing there. ‘I’d rather be alone.’
‘I’ll take care of you,’ Edmund had replied. ‘I promise, we’ll be fine.’
17
John smiled when Holly said, ‘Strange, that’s not how Jasper … I mean, from what I knew about you …’ She’d stopped, probably realising that she shouldn’t have pursued that train of thought. ‘I thought you were …’
‘Boring,’ Edmund suggested. John watched him snuggle further into his chair and look up through the glass ceiling in contemplation. ‘I am very boring.’
John had watched Edmund and Ovidia tell their story but was also fascinated by the interplay between Edmund and Jasper. Jasper was tense, on edge. His brother was much better at concealing his emotions. John knew that his own work as a psychologist gave him a certain perspective on humanity. He knew it was perfectly possible to be two disparate characters at once. Some people had distinct faces for different aspects of their lives — they could be a different person at work and another at home or at their children’s school. It was possible that Jasper had never in his life seen this side of his brother — a side that skipped work to spend a week in a flat of a woman he’d only just met.
Nonetheless, John didn’t expect to meet such people in his everyday life. He too was stuck, unsure of what to make of this version of Edmund. This was not the man he’d spent weekends with at the brothers’ childhood home. This was not the man who’d arrive in a grey suit on a Friday evening with a briefcase in one hand and swinging a grey cashmere scarf in the other.
One particular weekend — he supposed it had been nearly two years earlier — John had been invited to stay for the weekend at Jasper and Edmund’s parents’ house with Edmund present. He’d seemed off-colour, objecting to the music that was played and the walks that were taken.
John calculated that Edmund must have already been with Ovidia for two years at that point. He supposed that Edmund could just have been eager to get back to Ovidia. John, despite his expertise, would never have guessed that Edmund could have been hiding a relationship from his family. Most men he knew — friends, families, colleagues — would have been incapable of hiding the existence of their partners. They would have left clues or dropped hints, taken on some of the traits of their partners: peculiarities of speech, reading certain books, or preferring some subjects of conversation. John couldn’t recall ever seeing Edmund with anything of a bright colour, nor had he ever discussed running or holidays in Paris.
John felt slightly cheated. He wished he could assign Edmund to some kind of abnormal category of behaviour, but he corrected himself. It was he who had taken Edmund at face value and upon Jasper’s descriptions. He’d missed a fascinating subject, or, rather, he had run away from one.
On the Saturday evening of that weekend, while Edmund had been in the kitchen with his mother, John, Jasper, and Phil began discussing Edmund. Comfortably ensconced in the conservatory overlooking a neat garden, it had seemed to John that, for Jasper and Phil, speculating on Edmund’s sexuality, a topic which he was apparently secretive about, was not unusual.
‘I’ve decided he’s asexual,’ Jasper had stated, crossing his legs. It was hard to tell if he was teasing. ‘I read an article about it recently. Apparently it’s gaining recognition as a sexual orientation.’
‘That would be too exciting, in my opinion,’ John had said, looking back at his day in Edmund’s company. ‘Whatever Edmund does or is, it will be so uninteresting that you’ll wonder why you spent so much time talking about.’
‘So, we’ll agree he’s gay,’ Jasper had said. ‘That’s horribly boring. In the closet and not wanting to come out because it might be too “exciting”?’ He was laughing at his brother; he liked to.
‘He’s not gay,’ Phil had said abruptly.
The discussion had ended, but not for John. He’d heard what he wanted to hear. When John had grown out of his teens, like many men, he realised that sexual desire was about far more than physical perfection — if it were, a vast swathe of humanity would be excluded from those who interact sexually. He knew it wasn’t looks — of the two brothers, Jasper was by far conventionally better looking, and yet, John felt an intense physical attraction to Edmund.
The last time he’d slept with a woman other than Anne, she’d been strikingly curvaceous — dark haired with fire-engine red lipstick. She exuded burlesque, she teased nineteenth century courtesan, she was risqué, daring, bold. Her thighs were dimpled, and her waist had an overhang of fat, markers of having given birth naturally to three children. Without her clothes and make-up, she could have been one of the many clients who came into his office. But with her billowing skirt and nipped in waist, she was a figure from his fantasies. Edmund now was the subject of his fantasies — assertive, physically imperfect, and emotionally inaccessible — and that Edmund was male only made it so much more exciting.
John told himself sometimes that Anne had to be stupid. Anne had caught him out only once — she’d said nothing and done nothing except slap him — so hard that his face was left red and stinging.
Sexual repression was a term bandied about in his profession. It was a convenient explanation — he wanted another life, of sorts. He wanted the kind of sex that he couldn’t ask of Anne. He wanted acts and sensations that he couldn’t articulate. He had sexual desires that couldn’t be satiated in a marital bed — the longing for, and the pursuit of, someone other than Anne was part of what made the sex so exciting.
John had been surprised the first time he cheated. It was not as difficult as some people claimed. He was an average — some days he called himself less-than-average — man. Shorter than most men he knew, with hair that was perhaps too voluminous and curled viciously. Anne was just that little bit taller than him, tall enough to be considered a tall woman but short enough that, as long as she didn’t wear heels, he didn’t think they looked ridiculous together.
John liked to think that his craving for sex wasn’t about self-esteem. He saw it as the thrill of
having secrets. What greater secrets existed, he asked himself, than those with sex at their core? None that he could think of, none that existed in the realm of ordinary people. He decided the people around him that were having the most fun were those having surreptitious meetings, encountering strangers in restaurants, and having uninhibited sex without anyone else knowing. Affairs were complex; they involved emotion and the risks were much greater. They took more effort — and if all one wanted was sex, then an affair had no added value.
He was successful in his field, respected, invited to conferences, and asked to give talks and lead panels. He’d written a book and, as his publisher said, it had become a self-help sensation. He was looking forward to his next book tour and more celebrity and acclaim. He’d be away from Anne for days at a time. Of course he’d miss her and his daughters. He always did. To him, there was no more precious sound than the shrieks of his two little girls on a Saturday morning, followed by Anne bellowing at them to quieten down. But, on the road, he didn’t have to watch the time making sure he was home before the girls went to bed or to inspect himself in the mirror to make sure no trace of his adventure remained.
John remembered each meeting with Edmund; each time they’d part, he’d be left savouring memories of Edmund’s aftershave or his crisply laundered clothes. John would replay Edmund’s voice and marvel at the ease with which intelligent conversation came to him.
Each time they met, John added one more thing he admired about Edmund to his list. His obsession was becoming uncomfortable. The idea that he wanted anything more than a pure physical encounter with him was starting to intrude into his fantasies — ideas about waking up together, having breakfast, laughing over a cup of coffee.
‘Our father is not-so-secretly homophobic,’ Jasper had said, once Phil had gone to get more beer. ‘He knows his opinions are unpopular, so he never says it directly, just things like “oh, who does that person think he is?”, or “they’ve let another one of them on TV”.’