by Erastes
+ + +
A man who has never been unfaithful might stop and question this account, and I’d hardly blame him. But for all the guilt and the fear, once I’d got to the stage of having the flat at the Junction and once we were able to meet there regularly, it became as routine to me as going to work. The more you lie, I discovered, the easier it becomes. It seems nothing to say to one’s wife, “Yes, I like that hat” when, if truth be told, you’d rather see it shredded under the lawnmower. Small lies seem nothing—, and big lies—even the biggest—are no harder. They shrink with time and with repetition.
I know now that I compartmentalised my lies—in the same way that I compartmentalised many things—like my clients, for example. Never the twain shall meet, and that sort of thing. After a while, I didn’t even think to myself that I was lying to my wife about my affair with a teenager. I believed my own lies, and in so short a time span that I surprised even myself, the cold flush of guilt no longer plagued me when I told her I wouldn’t be home till late.
I was able to cover the extra hours I was allegedly working by blaming the weather and the time away from the office. I invented financial deals, new clients, fluctuating markets. There are many reasons why a conscientious stockbroker would be doing overtime. When we were starting out I had done it before, working all hours God sent, making new clients and was out of the house so often I might as well have been living aboard. I think that Val saw nothing strange in my new spurt of ambition and industry.
Something strange happened to my relationship with my family, however. Perhaps it was because I had to be very busy leading two lives; perhaps it was due to a sense of guilt, not for what I was doing when I was away from them, but that I was spending so much time away. But as the weeks passed and the winter slowly thawed away to a late and much-welcomed spring, I found that Valerie was more of a friend now than she had been since we were engaged, and that she was pleased with me for spending so much time indoors with her and the children. Home became something I worked at, something I did to fill in the gaps between stocks and shares…and Alexander.
From that first moment when he left me alone in the flat, the calendar came alive. I started counting days, then hours, sometimes minutes, sometimes seconds. Just sixty-four more minutes and the train will arrive at the Junction. Just two more days and it will be Thursday. Just ten more minutes and I’ll see him. Just five more seconds in your arms. Alex wasn’t the only one who begged for extra time. We were equals there; sometimes I had to hurry us out, sometimes he had less than an hour before he had to be home. Those times were frenetic; we had to cram into a mere sixty minutes what we could do for several hours.
There was no more uncertainty, either. We were like animals, at first. The second time he came through that door, I was waiting, pacing like an expectant father; I took hold of him as if it were a year since I’d kissed him, instead of less than a week. I think I hurt him, and I know I cut his lip, but it didn’t slow us down, and penitence didn’t surface until we lay gasping for breath, our clothes tangled around our ankles. There were many times, too many times, when we felt we didn’t have the time to undress. I would be buried to the balls in him while my hands slid under his school shirt and pullover, kissing what exposed skin I could reach, or he’d have my cock out almost as soon as he threw his satchel to the floor, pushing me back onto the bed as his mouth closed greedily, hungrily, around me.
We stole what time we could, at least once a week, sometimes a dizzying two, for he would pout and beg for a second meeting, and I would do anything when he begged me. We learned our sin quickly, or I did. I learned his skin, his shape. Learned the way his hair felt under my fingers. Mapped every curve and angle of him, both in the light and in the dark; traced the curve of his lips, the hollow of his shoulders; felt his warmth and his exuberance; and clung to him, our skins sticking together. I loved the way his body arched against that bed at the simplest of touches; I learned where he was ticklish—and he was amazingly ticklish—and where he loved to be touched the most. But I never learned to stop being astounded that once he had me—a middle-aged, inexperienced, married man—it wasn’t a joke. That he wanted me. That he didn’t tire of me. Of us. He never tired of us.
+ + +
“Have you and Phil fallen out?”
I pretended to finish the row of figures I was working on and spun my chair to face Val where she stood in the door. “Not at all. What’s for lunch?”
“Roast lamb, and don’t change the subject.” She came up behind me and rubbed my shoulders.
I shrugged her away with a show of impatience. “No. I suppose with the weather… I see him at work.” I hadn’t, not to speak to, at least.
“Why don’t you ask him over for lunch?”
“Oh you know him,” I said, and I couldn’t stop the blush I felt crawl over my skin. “He’s bound to be booked up.”
“You have argued!” She looked confused and angry at the same time.
“I swear to you, Val, we haven’t. You know how busy I’ve been.” It didn’t seem to placate her, as the frown remained. “Why the concern? You see Claire often enough—or are you spying for her?”
She turned away abruptly. “I happen to be fond of Phil. He’s not just your friend. And I don’t put people down and pick them up again as if they were toys.”
“What do you mean by that?” I said, but she’d gone. About five minutes after that, I heard her laughing. Suspicious, I edged out of the study and heard her talking to someone on the phone.
“No, he didn’t tell me about that. No, and I don’t believe that for a minute. Ed doesn’t know how… Oh no! You are making it up. Yes, yes, of course, we are! Of course, the children will be thrilled to see you. One o’clock? Yes, if you want, you don’t have… All right, then. I submit to your superior taste buds. See you then.” She put the phone down and walked back into the kitchen.
I stalked after her. “You rang him?”
“Yes, I did. And why shouldn’t I? He was delighted to be asked and said he’d thought he’d done something to annoy you.”
“I don’t like you discussing me with him.”
She reached down and put the meat in the oven. “Why on earth not? And why are you being so defensive? I can’t wait to hear the truth about that night out you’ve been so secretive about.”
I could feel the heat of a guilty blush starting again, creeping up from my collar. “I’m not being defensive. I told you before. Phil had a good time, I didn’t.”
“That’s not what he says.”
“What did he say?” I was nettled, and off-guard. Phil and I had hardly spoken since my asking for an alibi that Saturday night; I’d kept away from him because he’d wanted details of my ‘girlfriend’ and I wasn’t likely to go telling him anything at all. So we’d never arranged a cover story about the nightclub.
“Nothing, really. He hinted that you’d been dancing with some beehived beauty or other, that was all.”
“He should keep his mouth shut,” I muttered.
“Oh, he’s promised to tell me the whole sordid story at lunch.”
I opened my mouth. Then I shut it again and walked out. Back in my study, I cursed my short-sightedness not to have had an extra phone line there. I would have called Phil and got some details of his story from him. Or put him off. I had a very bad feeling about this sudden burst of friendship between him and my wife.
I sat and stared at the side of Alex’s house, hoping for a sight of him, just a glimpse—a reckless wave through a window, anything. I was unlucky. There was no sign of him. The mystery was solved when I went outside to open the gates for Phil’s arrival and noticed that the Charles’s car was missing.
“I think they said they were going to visit friends in London,” Valerie said, as we got changed.
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, I don’t know, for certain. I just vaguely remember Sheila saying that she hadn’t seen her sister since they moved here. Why should you know?”
She came around in front of me. “Is this about Alec?”
This time I turned away, fast. The blush hit me hard, cold and violent. I opened the wardrobe door and peered inside a drawer, pretending to look for cufflinks. “No. Why do you say that?”
“Trains, darling. You spend far too much time with him and his trains. Honestly, you men never grow up, do you?” She laughed that silvery taunting laugh I knew so well, leaving me behind, sweating and shaking.
Lunch. It stands out in my mind as a turning point, when I started to be aware of the chasm between me and my old life. There was a surface me now, and that was all that I could give to my wife and my friend: surface, but no substance. What’s ironic is that no one noticed for such a long time. There I was thinking I was oh-so-different, and no one even noticed.
Chapter 19
It was a little like being with clients, that lunch. Like playing poker with emotions. Finding the chinks in the armour and guarding against your own. Conversations with people you had some things in common with.
I took the offensive at first, greeting Phil with a hail-fellow-well-met, and being suitably impressed with the wine he’d brought. But Phil was clearly there to outflank me, and before long, he had Valerie firmly on his side. Throughout the meal he was charming and entertaining. The children laughed at his stories of grumpy clients and impressions of various board members, which he play-acted for their amusement.
After lunch, Valerie banished them upstairs, and the atmosphere changed. Phil played the grass-widower well, and even though Valerie was loyal enough not to gossip about Claire to Phil’s face, she understood that, as Claire had moved on, so should he.
“Are you…” she hesitated, twirling her small dessert wine glass, “making any arrangements?”
“There’s no need to be coy,” he said. “Divorce?” He sat back with a sigh as she gave a brittle, unsmiling nod. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it a hundred times.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I could. But…”
Val threw him a look which had a lot of sympathy in it and rose, waving us back down. “Stay here and finish your wine.”
“Let’s go to your study,” Phil said, picking up the bottle. As we stood, he caught my eye and grinned. “You can tell me about the birds in the garden.”
When the study door was shut, he made himself comfortable on the Chesterfield and waited for me to sit down. “Well? I thought you’d have rung me by now.”
“It’s not something I could talk about on the phone.”
He threw the cork at me. “Eddie. Don’t be obtuse. To make an arrangement to come around, or go out somewhere.”
“And we weren’t sent in here to discuss me, anyway. I’m supposed to be giving you a shoulder to cry on.”
“Let’s just pretend we’ve already done that. This is far more interesting. If one of us is getting some, I may as well live vicariously. Come on, Eddie, you can’t keep me in the dark. I’m covering for you. What’s happening? It’s been weeks since I’ve even heard from you. Is it all off, or what?”
I told him to keep his voice down.
“Well, tell me then.” He raised his voice. “Or I’ll shout!”
“All right!” There wasn’t any way out of it now. “Just as long as you look suitably talked-to when Val brings the coffee in.”
He grinned and stretched out on the couch. “I’ll be contemplating divorce with all seriousness. So?”
“I’m not giving you any details.”
“I’m not really surprised, old boy. You always were tighter than a drum. Just tell me—you are enjoying yourself and it’s worth the risk.”
“It’s worth the risk.”
“But you aren’t enjoying yourself.”
“No. Yes. Oh—bloody hell. It’s not that easy, is it? I’m not even sure about the risk.” I didn’t want to talk to him, I didn’t want to rationalise it, and I certainly didn’t want to weigh either situation up against the other.
“Let me put it this way.” He sat up and looked at me intently. “If I told you that you should give her up, whoever this is—and I do wish you’d tell me…”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“…would you?”
I looked at him then for a long time. I am fairly sure, by the changing expression on his face, that I told him more by the look on mine than I could have done in words. I’d been working on keeping a ‘family face’ on for so long, and to let it slip—even for a moment—even for another lie—was relief that caressed me.
“I see,” he said.
“No. No, you don’t.”
“Then tell me.”
I shook my head. “It’s more…”
“What? Complicated? Oh, Eddie, you are such a cliché.”
Was I? I was stung by his words.
“Are you going to leave Val?”
“Shut up. Just…” I turned towards the French windows. “Shut up.”
“All right. But you can’t go on, Eddie. Not like this. I know you. You are wound up ready to snap. You need to talk.”
“You just want to hear the details.”
“What I want is to take you for a drink and talk some sense into you.”
What I wanted to tell him it was too late for that, but it wasn’t the time or the place. Val called us and we went out into the sitting room for coffee. I remember that she looked from me to him and back several times with a worried expression. I spent the remainder of the afternoon working out what I was going to say to her when Phil left—knowing she’d be curious as to our talk.
“Come to the club tonight,” he said as we saw him out. “Val? You want to come too?”
“Can’t, I’m afraid. But yes, please take Ed out; he’s been working too hard.” She leaned against me, and her arm was hot against my back. I felt sick.
“I can’t.” I didn’t have any arrangement with Alex, but I didn’t want to go out, either.
“Don’t be silly, darling,” she said. “You’ve hardly been there since you joined.”
“True,” Phil said, “and the Committee has been asking after you. Wants your game up a notch by summer, remember.”
Outgunned, I gave in as gracefully as I could, and found another lie for Valerie after we closed the door. “I don’t think he wanted to talk about it here. He’ll probably open up tonight. Divorce, though…”
+ + +
Later at the club, we talked to the people that mattered, shared some jokes and I made promises to spend more time on the greens. Then Phil excused us, pleading business, and we left the Committee up at the bar.
“I don’t understand you,” he said. “If I was in your position, I’d be only too willing to tell you all about it. Even the nitty-gritty details.”
“Well, I’m not you.”
“I’m not joking, Eddie. The change in you since the last time we met is obvious. Whatever you are up to, it’s not doing you any favours. You’ve lost weight, and you’re as jumpy as the time the Fleetwood account nearly went to hell. It’s only a matter of time before Val starts to quiz you on it, and I know her, she’ll think one of two things: that your work is on the line, or that you’re playing around. She’s not stupid.”
Something broke in me. He looked so damned earnest, so different from the Phil who wanted to hear the smutty side of it. “No, she’s not.”
“Better she thinks you’re in trouble at work than the other thing. What would she do?”
I stared at him and realised that I’d never actually thought that through, because, I suppose, I’d never considered the possibility of me having an affair with another woman. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“Personally, I think she’d have your balls on a platter, but she does seem to love you, although God knows why. Do you think there’s a possibility that she’d throw you out?”
; And then once again we were at complete cross-purposes. I couldn’t tell him the truth, and the lies were pointless. If it had been another woman…I sat and thought about it. It was possible she’d forgive me; she’d often said that she hoped that Claire would come to her senses. So it could happen. But it was impossible to tell what she would do if it came down to it.
But with things the way they were? I’d be lucky to avoid prison.
Phil just sat there and watched me thinking, and for once he wasn’t smiling.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said finally. That was true at least.
“That’s fairly obvious. Jesus Christ, you of all people are the last person I’d have picked to lose his head over a bird. What’s so special about her? No, I don’t want details now—I’m just trying to understand this. You’ve got…you’ve got Val, Eddie. You never knew how lucky you were.”
At my baffled silence, for I was too full of the future to speak, he continued. “All right. Where did you meet her?”
“Oh, you know…in a pub.”
“You are the world’s worst liar, Eddie, you always were.”
“What does it matter?”
He sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t, and the less I know the less I can give away, but you realise that if it’s as bad as you say—”
“I never said it was bad.”
“—then you’ve got to understand that sooner or later you are going to have to make a choice. And when do you want to make it? When you can? Or when you have to?”
“It’s not…it’s not like that.”
He looked at me hard, then, and I really thought he’d guessed. “Oh,” he said. My stomach churned, waiting for him to say what I was certain he’d just realised. But he didn’t meet my eyes, and he didn’t say it, didn’t bring down the axe. “Don’t be naïve; everything comes down to that if you don’t get out beforehand. If you haven’t thought long and hard about that choice, then you’d better start.”
I clutched my glass. “Seems you know a lot about it.”
“I’ve dated more than you. It’s the same thing, same rules. Three in a relationship is all very well until someone finds out. Then it’s time to choose which way to jump.” He rubbed his hand through his hair, and again he looked really worried about me; it was a startling change. “I don’t know why we never talked about this stuff before. But if you aren’t prepared for everything to blow up, old boy—then you shouldn’t have got in.”