“Nevertheless,” she continued, “I know you’ll understand how terribly it shook me to find out, only six weeks later, that he was still lying? That he had yet another woman? Or maybe the same one; but by then it didn’t seem to matter.”
“But what I can’t understand,” I assured her, “nor ever will, is how he could just chuck away something so incredibly precious.”
“Then join the club,” she suggested bitterly. “Because once again you’re perfectly right—it was precious, the way I felt about him; everything I thought we had between us; those two years of—apparently—almost perfect happiness. Good heavens, did we have some great times! Good heavens, did I love him! And good heavens—wouldn’t I have done practically anything he asked!”
Believe it or not, I sat there feeling jealous. Feeling jealous of this man who had so totally fucked up; this man who had a truly self-destructive streak—my predecessor, who must now be passing the rest of his life in limbo. And why did I do it, Lord, oh why in the name of hell did I ever do it? That’s what I knew he must be asking. The never-ending question.
Feeling jealous of a soul in torment.
So much for magnanimity.
“But all the same,” she said, in a voice from which the bitterness had swiftly evaporated, “I suppose you can sympathize. In a way. He was a liar; a pathological liar. Lied about everything. Simply couldn’t help himself. At least,” she pulled a wry expression, “such was the view of the psychiatrist.”
“He went to a psychiatrist?”
“No, I did.” (Again! Complete reversal of an expectation!) “But a good deal later. After we’d split up. And after I’d spent most of my leisure time—and some of my working time as well—just sitting about like a zombie. I asked my doctor for some pills. He sent me on for counselling.”
“Oh, God, how desperate you must have felt!” I yearned to sit beside her, take her hand, but didn’t yet know if I should risk it. Instead, I tried to inject into my voice, my eyes, my body language, all the compassion of which I was capable. “What a nightmare! To be married to someone who couldn’t help but lie, yet who went on remaining so altogether plausible! You can’t ever have been sure of anything! I can’t imagine how you coped!”
“Well, as I say…finally I didn’t. I went to pieces.”
“For how long?”
“Six months… About six months.”
“But by then you were over him?”
“Over him? I suppose so. Though you can’t go through a thing like that without its changing you. And, naturally, I don’t mean for the better.”
“Perhaps you ought to let others be the judge of that?”
Inevitably, this sentence set up echoes and I really wished I hadn’t used it. She only shook her head, however, and offered no rejoinder.
But following another instant of quiet she did what I’d been hoping she wouldn’t. She looked at her watch.
“Oh, gracious, Sam! It’s time for you to leave!”
“Of course.”
I made to get up, but then, as if seeming to notice there was still some Scotch in my tumbler, sat back to finish it.
“Yet you can’t let one bad experience disillusion you forever.” I suddenly remembered something. “Though it’s little wonder,” I added, “that you described yourself as cynical, that evening on the beach!”
“Yes—and little wonder I should now describe myself as justified!”
“What?”
“Oh, you fool! You fool!” It was as if the forcefulness of ‘fool’ had brought her flying to her feet; but it was also as if the action’s abruptness had absorbed not augmented her vehemence. “Yet perhaps it wasn’t your fault,” she said, “any more than it was Zach’s.”
I was astounded. I was so astounded that for a moment I actually wondered if I had understood her properly.
“But I’m not…! I am not Zach! I am not a pathological liar!”
I could only hope that my incredulity would work in my defence.
“It was the one time,” I cried, “absolutely the one and only time! I swear it, Moira! You have to believe that!”
“Oh, you fool,” she repeated; but in a tone far less impassioned, a tone almost loving—yes, things were even now going to work out. “I took to you immediately. For the first time in years I found myself aroused. Not simply by your looks, by something that went deeper, I tried to tell you in the car, some suggestion of values these days largely disappearing …? Anyhow, after we’d all met on the beach and had decided to go for that drink—and you had charmed the barmaid into bringing Susie a bowl of watered beer, even a bag of crisps she wouldn’t let us pay for—well, by then I was already…yes, already… For the first time since Zach!—and when I’d never believed that it could happen to me again! You were kind and old-fashioned and dependable. And fun. I kept Liz up for a couple of hours after we got home, talking almost exclusively about you. I hardly slept that night. I was so full of dreams.”
“I hardly slept that night, either.”
“It was history repeating itself. The same old maelstrom. The same old burgeoning belief that there was no other man on earth like the one I’d just met.”
“And I had the same feeling—exactly the same! I had already fallen in love, too! In the shop. On the beach. I had to act so quickly. I hadn’t time to think. What else could I have done?”
“You could have told us the truth, for heaven’s sake! You could have told us the truth!” Vehemence again but equally short-lived. “Hinted that you were trapped in a bad marriage; that you and your wife were incompatible; brought out all the old clichés…which are clichés only because—so often—that’s the way life is. You could have told us in the pub, or told me on the phone, given me the facts, allowed me to make up my own mind as to whether or not there could be any sort of future for us…”
“I was going to tell you in the pub. I really was. I’d decided about that right from the beginning. I was even going to tell you before we got to the pub.”
“Is that right?” she said, totally unconvinced.
“God’s honour! God’s honour! I know that mayn’t sound like very much since I’m not…” I stopped, awkwardly.
“Not what?” she asked.
“But I was so scared I’d lose you. Can’t you understand that? And then after you’d phoned—you gave me such a glimpse of paradise, I couldn’t jeopardize the whole weekend, I… But, truly, I was going to tell you before I left London, I was going to make a very full confession, I…” Another sharp halt. “But hell, Moira, I did tell you, didn’t I? I did make a very full confession. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” My voice rose, vindicated and triumphant. “What better proof could you possibly ask for?”
“You were drunk,” she said. “In vino veritas.”
“But that doesn’t make one jot of difference. All it did was hasten the process.”
“Because you knew it could only be a question of time before I found you out.”
It seemed to me she was shifting her ground. (My goddess was shifting her ground!)
“Exactly! How could I ever have hoped to keep anything so fundamental under wraps?”
“Maybe Zach had been your mentor?”
“Forget Zach! I am not Zach! I am nothing like Zach!”
“Besides…” In place of conceding my advantage she simply altered the direction of her serve. “I used to love The Waltons,” she said. “This must have been my punishment. I fell for someone who was so good to his granny and whose granny was so good to him…”
“No, you didn’t,” I replied, angrily. “What on earth had you heard about my granny when you walked out of Treasure Island on that first morning?”
She merely repeated, “It’s time for you to go.” And she waited until I, too, was on my feet. “Incidentally, you had better take that cake with you. I couldn’t give it to the dustmen and I don’t think Oxfam would be interested.”
Another last-ditch attempt. (I was clearly being pretty fair
in my treatment of both wife and mistress.) “Then won’t you even believe it was the happiest period of my life: those moments which I spent with you last Friday night and Saturday?”
“I don’t suppose your wife would be precisely over the moon to hear that.”
“No, listen. There’s a difference. I was only nineteen when we married. I knew nothing about anything. Certainly not about love. I may have thought I did but…” Suddenly I went to her and took her by the shoulders. “I’m not sure how much of this is getting through.”
“Not very much, I’m afraid. I feel sorry for you, Sam, but I don’t imagine I could ever trust you again. I’m sorry if that’s blunt.”
She made an attempt to pull free but my fingers had strengthened their hold. “You have got to trust me!” I declared. “I feel desperate. Desperate! I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Somehow she broke away. “Now, no more caveman stuff—you promised! I’ll go and fetch the cake.”
“I couldn’t carry it. I’ve two cases to carry already.”
At least she didn’t press the point. “Where will you be heading?”
“God alone knows!” The bleakness of my tone may have been slightly exaggerated but not a lot. “It doesn’t matter. Earl’s Court? South Ken? Aren’t those the two big names in Bedsitter Land?”
“Or else there’s Kilburn,” she said. “Which is a good deal closer, only down the road, similarly cheap and grotty…maybe even more so.” She glanced at her watch again. “Although after seven in the evening…I think you may need to go into a hotel.”
“No, I’ll try Kilburn. Cheap and grotty fits in perfectly with how I feel.”
“Are you being deliberately pathetic?”
“Pathetic? That’s a bit of a far cry, isn’t it, from strong, vulnerable, innocent?” That is what she had tried to tell me in the car. “But anyhow…”
I turned my head away. It was true that in the first place I had been making something of a bid for sympathy. But the dampness which filled my eyes just then was genuine and I didn’t want her to see it.
“Oh, Sammy,” she sighed. It was the last thing she should have done…I mean, depending on your point of view. Quite suddenly, I was shaking, so racked with sobs that at first I couldn’t draw breath. She stepped forward and took me in her arms and perhaps for as long as a minute I cried myself out while holding onto her.
“Please take a chance on me. You’ve simply no idea how much I love you.”
Then the doorbell rang.
28
She remained downstairs for several minutes. I could hear the sound of two voices, Moira’s and a man’s, but nothing at all of what was said. When she came back, she seemed relaxed.
“I didn’t tell you earlier but that in fact was Zach. I still see him occasionally, either here or at a restaurant. I can’t help feeling fond of him.”
She added: “Come into the kitchen and I’ll scramble you some eggs.”
“Did he mind being sent away?”
“A little…but I couldn’t believe this was the time for you to meet.”
“May I go and wash my face?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t mean to do that to you.”
“I know.”
“I always used to feel contempt for men who cried.”
“You’re just a sexist pig!” But she gave me the sort of smile I hadn’t seen since Saturday.
While we were eating, she said: “What did you mean, Sam, when you told me swearing on God’s name mightn’t sound like very much, since you weren’t—since you weren’t what? A person who believed in God?”
I hesitated, looked down at the tablecloth. Fully recognized that my answer could be crucially important; practically a matter of life and death.
The supreme irony. I almost prayed again. This time for guidance.
I said: “I know I led you to believe that I was someone who had faith in God. I… Well, that was also…”
“What?”
I’d been about to say: “A lie—I think perhaps the last.” I would have added: “Except, no, one further sin of omission: I never told you that I’ve had a vasectomy.”
I’d had it all planned out. I’d meant to impress her with my honesty. (Like Zach? He thought I’d be impressed by his honesty, by his resolution to confess.) Had I remembered just in time?
Or was it something else that stopped me? A reluctance to admit to yet one more breach of trust; a reluctance to shed yet one more of those qualities which originally she’d found attractive?—it seemed that, as it was, there was so little of me left, so piteously little. Where had he gone to—that fellow, Samson Groves? (Ha! Samson Groves! So had he had a crew cut at the same time as his manicure? Was he now a skinhead? )
I looked up from the tablecloth. Nervously. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You don’t know what?”
I almost said, Anything. “I don’t know whether or not I believe.”
“But why did you encourage me to think you did—and that you were so very sure? You already knew that I didn’t believe.”
I said: “Like everything else, it grew.” (Or happened, rather; had there been the time for growth?) “I suppose I felt that you had certain hopes; and I couldn’t bear to disappoint them. I suppose I thought if that was what you were looking for—certainties, encouragement for a belief—then that was what I’d try to give. Somehow. Perhaps in this way if no other I was even being a little selfless…” I shook my head, however. “No. Not selfless in any way at all. It was purely a means to an end. I wanted you so much.”
“Wanted?” she said.
But it transpired that—unexpectedly coy—it was merely my tense which she was querying and suddenly I realized that it was going to work out. Oh, it was, it was! The inquisition was over. Against all the odds: I had come through.
“Wanted. Want. Shall want. For ever and ever and always, amen! All the gerunds and gerundives and participles thrown in. Oh, darling, I shall change, I shall change! I’m not basically a liar, never have been, but I’m still a lot of things I know I shouldn’t be. Vain, selfish, sexist, stupid, greedy”—I saw Matt using his tablemat as a reporter’s notepad—“arrogant at times, intolerant—lacking in compassion and imagination—mean, calculating, unstable…”
She put her hand up, swiftly, with a laugh.
“Whoa! Stop! This is not the way to sell yourself.”
I wondered for a moment if indeed I had overstepped the mark. “But I do have a couple of fairly nice points, as well. And all I need, deep down, is the love of a good woman.”
She dispelled these latest doubts…not by kissing me nor by the use of any reassuring phrase or endearment but simply by going to a cupboard and getting out the large iced cake with its haze of cottage garden colours. “I think that, for afters, we ought to have a slice of Granny’s cake.”
“Junie’s cake.” But then—again not sure whether I had said the right thing—I told her that Susie had been put down.
“Why?”
“Because Junie…” Then I paused and made a fresh start. “Because I suppose I should never have tried hanging on to her after the accident.”
Loyalty had been another of my father’s gods.
“Oh, Sammy, I am sorry. That must have been so… How did the children take it?”
I realized I hadn’t thought very much about how the children had taken it.
“They were both pretty upset. Naturally.”
Then I said: “But in a way Susie was more my dog than theirs.”
“I can believe it.”
I wondered for how long she would have to go through life assuring me she could believe it. I wondered for how long I would have to go through life asking myself whether or not she could believe it.
“How do they feel about your leaving home?”
“Badly.” For the moment, though, I didn’t want to think about that. Just those two syllables had been quite hard.
“But, tel
l me, isn’t there any least chance of a reconciliation? I mean, if it weren’t for me, if I hadn’t happened to walk into your shop looking for a present last weekend…?”
“No. None,” I said. “None whatsoever.”
“Not even for the sake of Matthew and Ella?”
“No.”
“Tell me about Junie. Just a little.” She smiled. “She’s obviously a good cook.”
This, I knew, was going to be difficult. I realized that someday I would need to loosen up but, for the time being, talk about Junie seemed better avoided. “Oh…we met and married and were much too young. We had no yardsticks and…and we didn’t appreciate that people changed; or that one of us could change and not the other. There ought to be a law: no one can marry under twenty-five.”
And I hoped that, for the present, this disposed of Junie. Yet when I thought of her being made to look foolish in front of a former schoolfriend—and, worse, in front of a former schoolfriend’s wife—I had immediately to add: “But, yes, that’s right. She is a good cook. And a good mother. A very good mother. And there’ve obviously been times when we’ve had a lot of fun. I’m not saying that she didn’t try to make things work. I’m not saying that at all.”
But, whilst owning up to this, I had to make myself think back ten hours. The steely set of her face. That mask of sullen enmity. I must really hold onto those. Anyway, I must hold onto them for tonight and tomorrow and probably the next few weeks. So has she discovered yet you’re not that good in bed?
She had been hurt, of course. She had been very badly hurt.
Can’t she bring herself to tell you how magnificent and strong you are, not even when you feed her all the proper lines?
I wished that at that moment we hadn’t been sitting there eating her cake.
“The very last lie,” I said, “or at least the very last omission. I’ve had a vasectomy. One gets no guarantee that these can be reversed.”
She simply pulled a face. I wasn’t sure if this chiefly expressed sympathy for me—or concern for herself—and I didn’t like to ask.
It was after half-past-eight when we cleared away the supper things.
New World in the Morning Page 21