I left him under the willow, smoking a cigarette. I knew it was going to be the last time. I knew it shouldn't have happened at all, and so, I think, did he.
Why had I done it at all? There's only ever one answer to that question—because I wanted to. Chasing it further takes you deeper into the forest, and if you're not careful, you'll never come out.
No, that's not good enough. Raymond would never settle for that. It just doesn't come naturally to me. Sean lives in himself in a way that I can't. He thinks about who he is and why he is. Things from his past, even his silly school days, are always there with him, like his obsession with the boy at his school whom he feels he let down. He lives an ethical life, trying to do what he should, trying always to do the right thing. But I've always just lived, done my job, earned my money. I knew what I wanted from the age of sixteen, and everything from then on was targeted. I fell in love with Sean because he was lovable and he wanted me, and then that side of my life was taken care of. When Harry came along, I knew that I could not allow myself to become too engrossed, as I could never have given up work at that stage in our lives. So I closed myself. Of course, I loved Harry, but the price of staying in my job was that I had to leave the active loving, the loving-as-doing, up to Sean. And it seemed to work.
Until Ludo.
Was it just selfishness, putting my pleasure before any other considerations? No, not that, because I never thought it was going to make me happy.
Perhaps that's the clue. Perhaps it was because I wanted to punish myself in some way, to find my heart of darkness and revel in it. That was why I craved something cruel and painful and dirty and vile. I craved hatred.
But that all sounds too much like the kind of line Raymond would enjoy, getting turned on by my self-loathing. No, not my style.
Was it merely boredom, then? God, is that all it was? A need for novelty?
I had to face the truth that things hadn't been right with Sean, not for a long time. The kind of things that we used to find endearing in each other were suddenly maddening. We'd lost that tolerance; more than tolerance, enjoyment in each other's little habits. The excitement and longing that I used to feel had seeped away; I no longer cared what he thought about things, no longer gauged my own responses to books and movies and people by his reactions. And I knew it cut both ways. And I think that was the killing blow. He no longer looked on me with astonishment—with that innocent, wide-eyed amazement—anymore, and I missed it.
So there we are. I was bored with my husband. I wanted more attention. And so I had an affair. How … undistinguished. How unoriginal. And it wasn't as if we had some open marriage, an agreement that a bit of straying would be fine. We didn't, and I would have left Sean if I'd thought that he'd actually slept with Uma or anyone else.
But now it would be different. Now I would be good. Living an ethical life can't be that hard if even Sean can do it. And love must be the way out. Loving Sean, loving Harry, loving us all. But I don't know if I can do it. Is there anybody to help me?
Not Raymond.
I went to him for the last time yesterday. I told him what I'd done. He seemed pleased. He wanted to know the details. I looked at his long face, at his careful hair and clean nails. He licked his lips. He can't have licked his lips, but that's what I see now, when I look back. I see him licking his lips and loving it, getting off on it. It may have been a simple voyeurism. Or some kind of kinky power thing. Or my imagination. But I knew I didn't want any more of him. When he said “See you next time,” I said, “I don't think so,” and walked out.
At last, they've begun on the apartment. We're at my parents’. I know it's a trial for Sean, but Harry loves it. Dad's great with him. He lives for Harry, and Harry revels in the love and attention. There's the garden for him to play in, and a girl from the town comes to help. Even Sean's admitted that it gives him more time to work and think and whatever else he does. I keep hoping that this can be a new beginning for us. I'm trying so hard to love him.
SEANJOURNALSIXTEEN.DOC
VOLARE, OH OH
My first live radio. Still slightly buzzing with it: “Can Men Have It All?”—a live discussion on Woman's Hour. There was me; a sociology lecturer from De Montfort “University” (sorry, shouldn't do that; I mean University); two feminists, doing a good-fem/bad-fem act; and the chief presenter, Jemima Faust herself, in the chair.
I had two pints in the pub beforehand. No point getting sloshed. Andrew came and met me, and I tried a couple of my routines on him. One he declared to be “too gay;” the other, “too fascist.”
“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to say, then?”
“The key, Sean, is just don't be yourself.”
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.”
The sociologist had written a report showing that men who brought up children suffered more stress and died earlier, often horribly, than men who did almost anything else. Or any women. The mean feminist, who was also the pretty one, said this was a Good Thing. The nice feminist, who looked like Jabba the Hutt, was sorry for us but thought that women had suffered longer, and worse. I made some jokes about trying to get off with the other mothers at the playgroup. My timing was ruined by Jemima, who deliberately threw me by raising her mohair top and caressing her great, pendulous bare breasts and rolling her eyes and moaning like the Wild Woman of Wongo about to explode into orgasm. She then mimed a full-on cock-bulging-in-the-cheek blow job, finishing in a great, gulping cum swallow.
Who could blame me for stammering?
Nobody seemed convinced or amused when I said that I was muddling through more or less okay, and that Harry didn't seem to really mind who looked after him so long as he got his way in all things, and that, yes, maybe I was a bit lonely, but, no, I wasn't especially bothered because there was always beer to fall back on. It made everyone angry—the women because it was “complacent” and “patronizing” and “oppressive,” and the sociologist because it de-emphasized the extent to which I was under stress, isolated, dying, etc.
I went for a drink with the pretty feminist after the broadcast. She was an American, with long, dark hair and immaculate makeup, and a well-supported bosom, which I on no account complimented her upon or stared at. Instead, I spun my line about equal opportunities for women being a way for institutions to appear to be progressive, but what it meant was that compliant middle-class white women were given the jobs instead of more problematic groups such as racial minorities and working-class men and women. The result was a reinforcement of the barriers that really counted, because white middle-class women were always going to be okay, happily pooling their income with their middle-class partners, living in the good places, driving the fast cars. Why else was it that the most repressive and conservative country in the world (“i.e., yours”) had the most progressive laws on sex discrimination? The way to help the women who needed it was to boost the minimum wage, but for some reason, that didn't find its way onto the agenda for most public feminists, because they were already sailing well above it. Instead, they obsessed about female tennis players’ getting as much as the men or increasing boardroom representation or grieving over the fact that not enough fat cats were female fat cats. The real issue was how to get more money and a better life to poor people, not easing the path to the top for the greedy and selfish of either sex.
That all went down very well. She said that I'd changed her mind on all these issues, and she suggested that we go together to a little hotel nearby that she knew. We talked in the room for a while longer, and then she stripped down to her suspenders, knelt on all fours, and called over her shoulder for me to give it to her, and no messing with shit like foreplay.
Okay, perhaps some of the above account was exaggerated, principally that concerning the lovely Jemima and the American feminist. In reality, Jemima just looked at me with the mingled concern, pity, and annoyance of a mother whose teenage son had come in drunk for the first time, puking on the roses and staggering over the doorstep. The Ameri
can handsomely rebutted all my points in the pub and then went to catch a train to Edinburgh, resisting my plea that she have another to ease the pain of prolonged contact with the Scots.
But the stammering and the talking shit and the being trounced in argument by everyone I spoke to apart, it really had been a moderate success. I was still reasonably high when I got back to Celeste's parents’ house. Celeste's dad had given me a key, and I let myself in, shouting out “Hello.” I could hear the sound of laughter and followed it to Magnus's study. It was a traditional book-lined job, just the kind of thing I coveted. Apart from the geckos. The geckos lived in a tank, set in the middle of the bookshelves. Magnus and Harry were in front of the tank, watching the creepy little things eat their daily ration of grubs and pupae.
“Ah, good morning,” said Magnus. It was nearly six o'clock. “Bella is out. She goes out, you know.” He said it as if going out were an eccentric, but not in any way reprehensible, thing to want to do.
“Daddy go now,” said Harry crossly.
Feeding grubs to the geckos was Harry's favorite thing in the world, bar nothing, and he hated being interrupted. I went quietly to my room, feeling deflated. I tried to read but couldn't. The room was hot and stuffy, and I couldn't open the window. Celeste came in at seven thirty. She carried on her policy, only recently adopted, of being nice to me.
“I love you,” she said, without any provocation.
“Oh yes, you, too.”
“Mean it?”
“That doesn't usually bother you.”
“Shut up.”
“Give me a kiss, then.”
She kissed me very nicely on the lips.
“I'm not going to see Raymond anymore.”
“Good. Why not?”
“He's a fuck wit.”
I laughed. It was always funny when she used an obscenity. I told her about my day at Broadcasting House, and she laughed at all the right bits—and not just at me, but with me, which made a pleasant change. Then we went down and hijacked Harry. I chased them around the house, up and down both sets of stairs and down into the spooky cellars, where Magnus kept his port and Bella her unhallowed earth and spare coffins. When we came back up, she was there.
“Are you dining with us?”
“I thought we'd go out, Mommy. You don't mind babysitting, do you? We'll put Harry down.”
“No, that is fine.” She looked at me as if this betrayal were my idea and then swept away.
“So, we're going out?”
“Yes,” said Celeste. “There's a nice new restaurant in the town. I thought it might be fun.”
And it was. We sat in the bar first and had cocktails—big, sweet ones, because we were out in the sticks. Celeste was silly and funny and flirty.
“Why are you being so lovely?” I asked her.
“Just because. I've been tired and stressed lately, and I know things have been a bit strained. But I feel better now. I want us to be happy.”
“I'm all for being happy. And I'm easily pleased, you know.”
“Liar! You're the fussiest, annoyingest person in the world.”
“Second annoyingest!”
“Equal annoyingest.”
We had dinner in a terrible Italian, where everything came in a thick white sauce made from Campbell's condensed cream of mushroom soup. But the wine was good, and the grappa was good, and we played footsie under the table and joined in with “Volare” and put the cornetto words to “O sole mio.”
We rolled home drunk and full and tripping over at nearly midnight.
“Have you got your key?” she asked, after searching in vain for her own. I did a bit of vain searching myself.
“Bugger. No.”
She rang the bell, an incongruous, 1970s ding-dong, Avon calling. She rang it three more times before it opened. I was hoping for Magnus. Harry would have been second choice.
Bella.
I'd never before seen her in her natural state. I didn't doubt Celeste's claims that she had been beautiful in her youth, and she had a certain scary Gothic something, even now, in her fifties, but here she was without the makeup. Her face was completely colorless and almost formless. She had no eyebrows at all. She looked like one of those blind fish that live right at the bottom of the sea, all white malevolence, feeling their way to the next meal.
“It's very late,” she said. Her voice was a little indistinct. Had she too hurriedly inserted her dentures? Perhaps she'd put the wrong set in by mistake—Magnus's or the poison ones she used to paralyze rodents.
“Sorry, Mum.” Celeste looked at me and giggled, which set me off. We felt like naughty children.
Bella turned from the door, and we filed in.
“Tell me about your evening,” Bella said, but just as I began to, she spoke loudly over me, finishing the sentence by saying “tomorrow.”
We scuttled away upstairs, still giggling. Celeste took all of her clothes off, and rather than putting on her heavy nightdress or even heavier pajamas, she slipped into bed naked. I couldn't remember the last time we'd made love—it must have been at least a month. It might have been three. There was nothing adventurous or dramatic about it, but we had to go very slowly and quietly, because the bed, the floor, the walls, and I all squeaked. We had to keep shushing each other, and yet more giggles broke out.
Afterward I said, “You know what happened, don't you?”
“You didn't come inside, did you?”
“I'm afraid I did.”
So much for coitus interruptus.
“I'm glad.”
“Nothing'll come of it.”
“Why, did you hit it on the head with your tennis racket?”
“What? Oh. Ha-ha. No, but it's hard, isn't it?”
“I'll say!”
“God you're a schoolgirl tonight.”
“Is that what turned you on?”
“I'm not sure that's even allowed to be funny. What turned me on is what always turns me on: you in the nude.”
“Sweet.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too. Sleeping now. Night night.”
PRADAPRADAPRADAPRADAGUCCI 17
I went with Sean at lunchtime to see what they'd done to our place. We held hands as we wandered through, gasping at the walls knocked down and the new spaces and the dust and the excitement of it all. The builders, glumly mustachioed Poles, were a bit moody and sullen—I expect we'd interrupted one of the tea breaks—but I was amazed at how much they'd done.
“Destruction's always the easy bit,” Sean said meaningfully, and then quoted some poem about fire and ice.
All of our furniture was crammed into the back rooms, piled up like stuff in an Egyptian tomb.
“I could live in here,” he said, looking at a bed laden with chairs and side tables and lampshades. “Might have to if your mom keeps it up.”
“Keeps what up?”
“Being herself.”
“That's not fair, you know. They are letting us stay, after all.”
“Yeah, and don't they let me know what a favor it is,” he said.
“Harry loves it, and they him.”
“That's true. It's what makes it all bearable.”
“How much do you think I enjoy it when we stay at your mum's?”
“We never do.”
“Because it's too small. Please let's not argue, it's ruining this for me, and I was so enjoying it.”
“Sorry. Giz a kiss.”
The builders had some strange stilt things, which they strapped on to strip the ceiling, and Sean insisted on having a go, while I talked to the foreman about timings and deadlines.
“You'll break your leg,” I said to him, but he didn't. He just bashed his knee and nearly started crying.
The good news was, they thought they'd be all done in a month. The designer we'd got in, a friend of Galatea's who was prepared to stoop to “domestic,” had predicted eight weeks, so it was a boon.
I think one reason why Sean was so happy was that he'
d been asked to do a book based on his radio talks. The publisher was nothing special (according to Sean, their bestseller was a book of cat recipes— not, he assured me, interesting ways to cook a cat but healthy alternatives to Whiskas), and he had to rush so it could be out by Christmas, but I think he was relieved about finally having something concrete to do. He promised there wouldn't be anything horrid about me in it. I'd never listened to his broadcasts—I was too busy during the day, and he never got round to taping them—so I was looking forward to seeing what it was all about.
At work that afternoon, I decided I'd better try to phone Ludo. I wanted to say sorry. Stupid, I know, but I felt that the guilt was on my side and not his. I wanted to see if somehow we could undo what we'd done, go back to the point before everything changed.
Katie answered his mobile.
“Hello, Katie Castle.”
I should probably have put the phone down. No, that wouldn't have worked: she'd have the number on the handset.
“Katie? Hi.”
“Who's … Is that you, Celeste?”
“Yes.” Quick. Had I dialed the wrong number by mistake? Or did I want Ludo for something innocent, something not including raw and painful sex in a hotel or under a tree or anywhere else?
“How did you know to reach me on Ludo's mobile? I just borrowed it for today, because mine's on the blink, and he never uses his for anything except telling the time.”
“Oh, I didn't realize this was his. I looked you up in our book, and it had this number under you both. What luck. Can you come to dinner?”
“That'd be lovely, but aren't you staying at your parents’? Won't they mind?”
“Not a bit. I'll send them out for the night to the pictures or to see a play or something.”
“Who else's coming?”
“Oh, the usual. Haven't invited anyone else yet. You're the first.”
The Marriage Diaries Page 19