Alys, Always (23 page)

‘It’s nothing,’ I say when he asks me what is wrong. And then I look away, towards the street. A few of the windows in the block opposite are open, making the most of the milder weather. Someone throws a bucket of water over a soapy car. The sky is an undecided colour.

‘Would you like to go out? A walk? The cinema? Can I take you to dinner afterwards?’ he says, a helpless note in his voice. This is unusual: he’s normally very cautious, in case we meet someone he knows, in case he is recognised.

I agree to a walk and we catch a cab to Regent’s Park, striking out from Camden Town and skirting the edge of the zoo, turning south towards Baker Street as the minaret and copper dome of the mosque come into view. There is a suggestion of green in the trees. The boating lake ripples with ducks.

I seem to have his attention now. He’s very gentle with me, very courteous and conciliatory. We talk a little about the office, a book I am reviewing, and then he tells me briefly about his progress with the novel. He says he is finally happy with the direction it’s taking; he thinks it’s coming together at last.

Some runners speed past us, tight in a pack, breath like pistons. The playing fields are scattered with five-a-sides, the
goals marked out with piles of waterproofs and jerseys. Laurence takes my hand.

‘You must tell me,’ he says, ‘when I do something wrong.’

I allow my hand to rest in his. For a moment, I wonder whether I should just let this slide, wait for a few weeks, and then try again. But I’m feeling impatient. Of course, it’s a gamble. I can’t be sure that he will do what I need him to do.

‘It’s awkward,’ I begin. ‘I’m not really sure how to explain it.’

He’s looking at me. I’m sure he’s thinking:
Oh Christ
,
what does she want
? But maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s thinking:
I don’t want to lose her
. I can’t be sure. I won’t know until I’ve said it out loud.

‘I don’t want to be taken for granted,’ I say, in a burst. ‘I don’t like feeling as if I’m your … dirty little secret.’

‘Is that really how you feel?’ he says, and there is a stricken look on his face.

I nod. He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he says. ‘I had no idea. I’m sorry.’ We walk on, our steps synchronised. Cries of triumph and despair erupt from a game to our left.

‘Of course I know it’s not easy for you,’ I say. ‘You still have a lot of …’

‘Baggage,’ he says, with a wry laugh. ‘Well, that’s true. But it doesn’t excuse the fact that I’ve made you miserable. You don’t deserve that, my darling. Not least because you’ve made me so happy – just when I’d almost lost faith in happiness. What would make you feel better? How can I make it up to you?’

This is unfair, I think, with a quick blaze of indignation. If he bothered to think, if he bothered to put himself in my shoes, he’d know exactly how to improve things. But – as I’m already aware – he’s emotionally lazy. He prefers other people to do the work.

‘It might help,’ I say, the anger carrying me along a little, ‘if you treated me with more respect.’

‘That’s not—’ he’s protesting, but I keep talking.

‘I know you don’t want to tell Teddy and Polly about us, and of course you don’t want us to be seen together, and who knows, maybe we’ll never even get to that stage. But right now I’m starting to feel as if we only ever meet on your terms, when it suits you. My flat – at your convenience.’

He’s nodding, frowning, the epitome of reason. A football rolls across the path and he moves towards it and kicks it back into the game, raising his hand to acknowledge the shouts of thanks.

‘How can I make it up to you?’ he asks again as we walk on. ‘What would make you feel better?’

I sigh and pull my hand away from his, rubbing my eyes.

‘No, you’re right,’ he says, as if he suddenly understands my frustration. ‘Perhaps it’s time.’

I wait. Time for what? Time to tell his children? Time to give me a key for the house in Highgate?

‘Let’s work out how we’re going to do this,’ he says. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand that I don’t want to rush it. We’re going to have to handle it carefully for the children’s sakes.’

‘Of course,’ I say, not sure what he is suggesting.

‘Well, let’s begin by going out to supper,’ he says. ‘Somewhere in town. Somewhere nice.’

‘Oh, that would be lovely,’ I say, hating the way I have to sound grateful for such a tiny concession. ‘Are you sure?’ and he says absolutely.

‘Go on. You decide. Where do you want to go?’

So I pick a smart new Italian restaurant I’ve read about, off Marylebone High Street, and I get the number and pass my phone over to him, and there’s a little problem about getting a table until he gives his name, and then there’s no difficulty at all.

We are shown to a round table covered with a stiff white cloth as the evening sets in. The waiters dart around us, in spots of bright light, coaxing our coats from us, distributing and collecting menus, providing us with bread and water and wine, and then they retreat to the dimmer edges of the room, waiting until they are required. Across the street, lamps are lit in an upstairs flat. A shadowy figure moves to and fro within: the mysterious, appealing choreography of a stranger’s life.

I unfold my hard starched napkin and put it on my lap. ‘You never talk about Alys,’ I say once they have brought our plates.

He says he’ll tell me anything I want to know.

She was a good woman. It’s important I understand this. He’s not stretching the truth when he says she was far too good for him, he adds, bowing his head as if to suggest,
Maybe it’s the same with you
. He was not always an attentive husband. He has regrets about the things he did, the things he did not do. Work distracted him from their life together, he accepts that. She bore the brunt of reality for him, more or less uncomplainingly. She was a wonderful mother. The children loved her. His friends, their friends, loved her.

I say I remember how affectionately Malcolm Azaria spoke about her, and he stops buttering his roll and looks at me, surprised, momentarily baffled. ‘Oh, of course – you were there,’ he says. ‘I’d forgotten. You seemed so different back then.’

‘Did I?’

He puts down his knife, frowning with the effort of remembering. ‘Yes, you seemed so … shy isn’t quite right. Retiring, I suppose. Hmm. I can’t quite put my finger on it.’ I know the words he’s too tactful to use: colourless. Unimportant. Forgettable.

The memory makes him reassess me. I can see him puzzling over it. Perhaps he has never thought so hard about me
before. ‘Where did you come from?’ he murmurs, sliding his hand over mine.

I smile and take my hand away, lifting my glass to my mouth. ‘Tell me more about Alys,’ I say.

So he tells me about her kindness, her patience, her tolerance. He makes her sound, to be frank, a little dull and wholesome. And all the time he is describing her, he’s inadvertently describing himself: his unkindness, his impatience, his intolerance.

For the first time, I feel a little sorry for Alys.
She let you get away with everything
, I think.
She lost control of you
. I think of his study, the fluttering coloured Post-its, the way he marshals his fictional creatures, the way he runs his little universes. The nameless girls. The Julia Prices.

I promise myself that I must never forget. I must marshal him in the same way.

As the evening unwinds, with its candles and heavy cutlery and rich shiny sauces, I wait for him to broach the subject of Julia Price, but her name never comes up. I could ask about her, I suppose; I could say that Honor told me about the affair. But I have an instinct that might be a step too far tonight. It’s one thing to be a careless husband; quite another to be a faithless one. So I listen to his invented version of their marriage, and I wonder, idly, where the truth lies.

One thing comes of the evening, at any rate. Laurence decides – he believes the decision is all his – that he needs to tell his children.

‘I don’t think you should say anything to them,’ I say. ‘I really don’t, unless you are completely sure about it. It would be awful for them if you weren’t absolutely sure.’

He nods, in full agreement, but not before I see a tremor of unease.

‘I mean,’ I say, ‘look at it from their point of view. Teddy and Polly won’t want to know that you have a … a
girlfriend. Something casual. Imagine how that would feel to them. It would be a betrayal of their mother – your marriage.’

‘Go on,’ he says, and then there’s a pause as the waiter puts an espresso cup before him.

‘Oh God, this is embarrassing,’ I say, fiddling with my coffee spoon.

He looks at me, smiling, but the unease is still there. ‘Go on,’ he says again.

‘I think you have to be sure …’ I take a deep breath, and then I say it, as if it’s being dragged out of me, but as if it has to be said some time. ‘… about
us
. And do you know what, Laurence, I don’t think you are.’

The words hang there in the air over the table, twisting and re-forming.

This is it
, I think.
Crunch time
. I’ve staked everything on this. I’m pretty sure what he’ll say in response – I’d never have said the words, were I not – but of course there’s a chance I’ve miscalculated.

I watch him sitting there: the colour of his shirt, the shape of his hands, the fingers curled daintily, ludicrously, around the doll’s cup. The moment stretches on and on. I wait for the snap.

And then he’s saying, ‘Oh, but you’re wrong; I am, I am absolutely sure. Don’t you know? Can’t you tell?’

And I’m laughing too, with happiness, relief, and satisfaction also, and I’m asking him how, why, when: all the questions I’ve held back for all these months, for fear I’d scare him off.

He says, catching my hand, ‘Oh, I’ve known for ages – since Biddenbrooke, since that day when I arrived, I came into the hall and you were at the top of the stairs, do you remember? I’d startled you. You’d been asleep, I think … you looked as if you’d been sleeping. Do you remember? I
saw you and I came up the stairs, and something happened, a sort of electricity … It was the strangest experience. Do you know what I’m talking about?’

‘Of course,’ I say, hesitantly, smiling, but frowning faintly as well, narrowing my eyes as if I’m trying to remember.

‘Oh – Frances,’ he says, flooded with amusement and indulgence, but stung just a little. ‘You’re such a bad liar. Your face. It’s a picture. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?’

I protest that of course I do, while leaving him in no doubt that I don’t. Why do I dissemble on this point? I think it’s good for Laurence to remember that he put the chain of events in motion. It’s good for him to believe he had a moment of revelation and acted upon it, decisively, authoritatively.

And yes, possibly this is a little less than kind; but I also find I want him to believe that when he first noticed me – properly became aware of me, during that strange vivid moment on the stairs – I was almost oblivious of him.

‘So yes, we must tell the children,’ he goes on.

I notice he doesn’t bother to ask me how certain I am of him. He just assumes I’m in accordance. Why wouldn’t I be?

‘Unless …’ he adds, struck by an afterthought. ‘I don’t suppose you’d do it, would you? What about
you
telling Polly? Maybe it would be better, coming from you.’

I think this is a very bad idea, for many reasons, and the ones I put to him seem to be persuasive. ‘Of course you’re right,’ he says, with some regret. ‘I suppose it’s the sort of thing I should really deal with myself.’

I wonder aloud what will be the greater shock: the fact he’s in a relationship, or the identity of the person with whom he’s having it.

‘Oh, I’m sure once they’ve got used to the idea, they’ll come round quite quickly,’ he says. ‘Polly’s terribly fond of
you, she has been from the moment she met you, and I can’t believe Teddy will be a problem. They’ll be glad, won’t they, to think of me being happy?’

I say I’m sure they will be, but I know otherwise. It’s the old problem: he’s self-centred, optimistically deluded, unable to analyse the situation with the necessary clarity. It’s not his way to scan family life for potential pratfalls or catastrophes. Not for the first time, I find myself pitying him his limited imagination, contemplating the gaps that patient, stoical, apprehensive Alys must have bridged for him for all these years.

‘I tell you what,’ he’s saying. ‘Come round next Thursday, after you finish work, and we’ll drive up to Biddenbrooke for a long weekend.’ He says Polly is due to have dinner with him on Tuesday or Wednesday, and he’ll invite Teddy too, and tell them both at the same time, and then it’ll all be out in the open.

I’m aware of a tension building up as the week passes. At work, my thoughts are clouded with scenes of Laurence, of Polly, of Teddy; of appalled astonishment and crying and, more distantly – so distantly, in fact, that it seems close to fantastical – of reconciliations and expressions of goodwill. Will he tell them as soon as they arrive, as he embraces them and takes their coats? ‘Oh, and by the way, I have a bit of news …’ No. Surely he’ll be nervous, he’ll feel his way, build up to it.

I keep my mobile close: I’m half-expecting Polly to call. I daren’t expect her to be pleased, but perhaps she’ll be in tears, angry, horrified, and maybe I’ll be able to reassure her or talk her down.

But Polly does not ring.

Laurence phones, as he promised he would, on Thursday
morning. He does not offer me any clues. He sounds as he always does. Mary is at her desk, so I’m careful not to say, or ask, anything compromising.

He says he’d happily pick me up from the office, but it might make more sense if I could find my own way to Highgate: it’s an easier drive out from there.

‘OK, I should be there by seven,’ I say. ‘Great. Yes. I’ll look forward to it.’

Putting the receiver down, I look at Mary’s shiny head bent over her desk and it seems safe to assume she wasn’t listening to the conversation, but a little later she walks past my desk and kicks – with the pointy toe of her chocolate suede shoe – my overnight bag, half hidden under my desk. And then she says, with a deathly sort of innocence, ‘Doing anything nice this weekend?’