Apple Tree Yard (19 page)

You indicate an empty bench on the towpath and we descend the steps, slowly, still arm in arm. As we sit, I let my hand fall from your arm, and you do not reclaim it although we sit close enough for our hips to touch through our coats.

‘What time’s your meeting?’ I say, pointlessly. It just seems odd not to be making conversation when there is so much we won’t have time to say.

‘Soon,’ you reply. A cyclist idles by along the towpath, ringing his bell as he disappears into the blackness beneath the bridge.

We talk a little bit about our weekends, and our schedules for the week ahead. We don’t discuss what has happened – I thought we might, would have liked to in fact, as you are the only person I can talk to about it, but I’m also frightened of where such a discussion might lead, so I don’t raise it. Half an hour is nothing, and because it isn’t time to discuss anything in depth, we don’t seem to be discussing anything at all. Thirty minutes. We must have used up half of those minutes already, just meeting and walking a bit and finding a place to stop. I’m afraid of the time, this afternoon. A lorry thunders down York Way, its roar a sudden blare, and I flinch. I’m afraid of everything.

It is good to see you but later, for reasons I won’t be able to be precise about, I will feel that this meeting was not a success. You seem distracted – maybe it is just how little time we have. You have an intriguing habit when you are thinking hard. It makes me smile, sometimes. Your look becomes concentrated but somehow vacant – I can almost see the cogs turning in your brain. It reminds me of how, when my children were three or four, they often talked to themselves when they were thinking something through, whispering their thoughts out loud. I am not claiming you are that transparent, of course – the opposite, in fact, as that vacancy in your eyes makes you quite opaque – simply that, although I cannot tell what is happening in your thoughts, I know that something is. Something is going on.

It is quite hard, this look of yours. It is not affectionate or knowing. You are not thinking of me.

You lean forward on the bench and rest your elbows on your knees, staring thoughtfully ahead, then you turn and stare at me for a bit, and then say, ‘Have you told anyone about us?’

‘No!’ There is indignation in my exclamation. Is that what you have been thinking about?

You continue to stare. ‘No one? You sure? Not a late-night confidence with your friend Susannah, a talk over a bottle of wine?’

‘I haven’t told a soul.’ The only blurting I have done is to my computer – it’s all there, disguised, buried, and nobody uses that computer but me. And I realise that is why I started writing that account, to prevent myself from telling Susannah. What has happened between you and I has been so extraordinary, so out of character for me, that I would have burst with it if I had not written it down.

I want to parry this line of questioning. I don’t like it. ‘Have you?’ I ask, and you give me a glance.

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Who would you tell if you were going to tell, just if?’ The slight note of merriment in my voice is edged with desperation. I know there is no chance you have a confidante. I am asking because it has come to me that I have no idea who your friends are or even if you have any. Is someone like you allowed friends or do you merely have associates? If you compartmentalise, then that means that I am, and will always be, trapped in my own compartment in your head. I will never be general or ubiquitous. I will never be truly present for you.

My question has been so daft that you don’t even answer – that’s an irritating trait of yours, ignoring what you consider to be insignificant or foolish in my curiosity about you.

The cogs are still turning. ‘We need to have an agreement,’ you say, and you reach out and take my hand in yours, holding it between both of yours in your lap. You squeeze, lightly, the slightest of pressure from your fingers as we both stare straight ahead. On the bank opposite, there is a gleaming office building. A collection of white plastic bags drifts by on the surface of the canal, blown by the wind. ‘I need to know that if you are ever asked about me, you will say this. We met in the House of Commons. We’ve talked a few times. We’ve become friends. I’ve been asking your advice because my nephew is doing his A-levels and is interested in a career in science. We’re acquaintances, friends if you like, but nothing more. If you are ever questioned in detail, then stick to the truth of the meetings, precisely, time, place, what sort of coffee etc., but leave out the sex. We’ve met infrequently enough for it to be innocuous, without the sex, I mean. Can you do that?’

‘Of course,’ I say, but my voice is small and sad. I want your focus to remain on me, on what has happened to me, but you are, naturally enough I suppose, thinking ahead to what might happen if I change my mind and report the assault to the police, to how you might be exposed in court if anyone looks into my life. You are thinking about your marriage, your career. I don’t blame you for this – it is one of the things I have loved about you, that you are discreet and want to protect your family life, for I want to do the same and would be horrified if you felt otherwise, but the weak part of me feels disillusioned. That part of me wants you to put me first, right here, right now, wants you to tell me that you are going to track George Craddock down and beat him to a pulp, regardless of the consequences.

His face is in my face. I see it all the time. I see the students glimpsed at the far end of the corridor as we left the building, moving around the Events Hall with their black plastic dustbin liners. Why should that picture come into my head, time and time again? I don’t understand why that image is stuck in my head. It comes to me how much I want George Craddock to be on the receiving end of physical harm. This is a new thought. I have never wanted that for anyone. But what I want is for him to feel hurt and afraid. I want someone to do to him what he did to me – befriend him, in a pub maybe, spend the evening drinking and chatting, then, in car park, in the dark, beat him and bugger him – and afterwards pretend that nothing was wrong and that he liked it. I am not fantasising about Craddock being arrested or humiliated in court or slopping out in prison – I am not (and as it turns out, never will be) fantasising about the due process of law taking its course. I am fantasising about him on his hands and knees in a car park with his trousers round his ankles, sobbing with fear and pain, scrabbling for his broken glasses on the rough tarmac.

*

Be careful what you wish for, my aunt used to say, darkly. Aunt Gerry had a pessimistic view of life but then she had ended up raising me and my brother when she hadn’t expected to, so maybe she felt entitled. Be careful. You were thinking ahead, but much further than I could have imagined. I should have given you more credit.

You leave first, of course, striding from the bench to your meeting, or whatever it is, and I sit there for a while, pointless pride ensuring that I don’t watch you mount the steps to the road – but then I crack and look up, just in time to see you striding down York Way, on the pavement above me, already on your phone. I check my watch and tell myself that I will sit for another fifteen minutes, no more. After that, I don’t know what I will do. Throw myself into the black water of the canal, perhaps, along with the solitary duck and the floating green algae and the puffing plastic bags.

I never did tell Susannah about you, you know. Guy and I met Susannah when we were students. She was his friend first, then mine, then best woman at our wedding – I refused point-blank to call her a bridesmaid. She wore a satin trouser suit with flared trousers and a fitted jacket: it accentuated her height, her slenderness – everything about her I have ever envied was apparent that day: the cheekbones, the short dark hair, the light-brown skin. She used to laugh at me when I told her I wanted to be elegant like her. ‘When you’re as tall as me, it’s really easy to get an undeserved reputation for elegance, all you have to do is stand still.’ Once, when we were both drunk together, she confessed she had always wanted to be ‘short and cute’ like me.
Cute…?

For some years after our wedding, despite or perhaps because of her beauty, Susannah remained single, often coming over to our place on a Friday night. I would get Guy to put the kids to bed so she and I could sit and eat pretzels with our wine while dinner cooked and often she would sigh and talk about some man. Guy and I loved these stories but felt guilty about loving them, living vicariously through her romances, as if she was our own personal soap opera. We met a procession of them, over the years. Each relationship would last a year or two. There was the tall one who called her ‘wifey’ and pinched her cheek and, to my horror, made her simper in return. There was the older Jewish one who played the piano and was crazy about her. She dumped him – inexplicably in my view – just as I was wondering where I would buy the hat. Then there was the sullen Dutch one who scarcely spoke a word – she assured me he was the best lover ever, really athletic she said. Then, when we were all twenty-eight, she met a fellow doctor at a conference, Nicholas Colman he was called, two years younger than her but charming and mature, good with our kids when he came round.

It all seemed so obvious. I started thinking how, if they got a move on and had their children quickly, we would all be able to go on holidays together. And Susannah and Nicholas Colman did marry, had a son immediately: Freddie, my godson, as close as a cousin to my two. Then, when Freddie was three, just after Susannah had been made a consultant, Nicholas Colman fractured her left cheekbone. Even now, when she turns her head in a certain light, you can see, if you look closely, a small asymmetry in her features. When she smiles, a barely detectable shadow crosses her face. You have to know her face really well to see it.

It took her another three years to leave Nicholas Colman after the cheekbone incident. We are taught we can redeem them, she said to me once. We are taught it as soon as we can read. We can turn the beast into a prince, if only we love him enough. And, she said, you know instinctively, how bad it’s going to get when you leave, so you keep putting it off. You think that while you are with them you might be able to control it a bit, but you know that once you leave, you will be in real danger.

In the end, it was Guy and I who called in the police, after an incident where Nicholas Colman turned up at our house and banged on the door for an hour and a half while the three children were upstairs. Guy was out when it started. Susannah and I sat cowering in the kitchen saying things like, ‘He’ll stop soon.’ But he only stopped when Guy came home. Guy told us later that as he walked up our short drive, Nicholas Colman turned and smiled and held out his hand and said, ‘All right, mate?’

For a couple of years after that, Susannah and her son Freddie holidayed with the four of us. Nicholas Colman dropped out of the picture after the court case and the injunction, thank God. Freddie has turned out handsomely. He studied law at Bristol and is now doing some sort of accountancy training on top of it, something to do with corporate finance, and although he will finish the process of his extended education with massive debts it is already clear that within a few years he will be able to buy us all out three times over. Sometimes, I have to try hard not to wish my own son was more like Freddie. I have never admitted this to anyone.

Susannah has always been soft on Guy. They flirt with each other outrageously. It’s a standing joke between us. She thinks I am lucky to have him. I do too, of course, but it annoys me how easy it is for a man to look good to those who observe him from outside a relationship. He doesn’t hit you, he’s not an alcoholic, he’s good with the kids – all these things are told to women, even by other women, by way of emphasising just how lucky they are. Guy scores points just for not beating me up. I wonder if anyone has ever said to Guy, ‘Let’s face it, she doesn’t hit you, she’s not an alcoholic and she is really good with those kids. You should be grateful.’

So no, I haven’t confided in Susannah, but that’s not to protect you or me or even Guy. It’s to protect her.

I rise from the bench and walk slowly back to King’s Cross station. I have to walk slowly as it still hurts – that’s because it’s healing, which is drawing the skin tight. I go into the main station because I know somewhere in there will be a branch of Boots and I think it might be a good idea if I buy a bottle of water and something to eat, and some Vaseline.

*

It takes about ten days for the initial period of shock and denial to wear off – ten days to a fortnight. During that period I don’t eat, I don’t sleep. I shower often. The two pictures remain in my head; his face in mine, the students drifting about the hall like ghosts, far off in the distance, not seeing me as I pass. Guy is busy at work, and that’s good. Susannah sends me a couple of emails asking when we are going to meet and I put her off. At work, I am on automatic pilot. Luckily for me, I have enough seniority to appear busy and not have to explain to anyone why. All I have to do is be a little brusque with the people around me and they leave me alone. On the two days I go into the Beaufort, I ask my personal assistant – the one I share with two other Associates, that is – to hold my calls while I’m working. She doesn’t query this. She becomes protective of me. I hear her saying to someone on the phone, ‘Dr Carmichael has to prioritise, you know…’ She’s the kind of PA who enjoys fielding calls. If she were a different gender and three stone heavier, she would have made a terrific nightclub doorman.

I am at my desk at the Beaufort when I get the email. It is ten days after the assault. Later, I think it was lucky I was at work. Although I have my own office at the Institute, the walls are made of glass from waist-height upwards and I am visible to anyone in the open-plan office outside, so I am forced to pretend.

My inbox is already open and I am going through it, when it pings up, there at the top, with a tiny yellow envelope next to the name: George Craddock. In the subject line it says:
Lecture next month
.