Damage (3 page)

I
HAVE SOMETIMES LOOKED
at old photographs of the smiling faces of victims, and searched them desperately for some sign that they knew. Surely they must have known that within hours or days their life was to end in that car crash, in that aeroplane disaster, or in domestic tragedy. But I can find no sign whatever. Nothing. They look out serenely, a terrible warning to us all. ‘No I didn’t know. Just like you … there were no signs.’ ‘I who died at thirty … I too had planned my forties.’ ‘I who died at twenty had dreamed, as you do, of the roses round the cottage some day. It could happen to you. Why not? Why me? Why you? Why not?’

So I know that in whatever photographs were taken of me at that time, my face will gaze back at you confident, a trifle cold, but basically unknowing. It is the face of a man I no longer understand. I know the bridge that connects me to him. But the other side has disappeared. Disappeared like some piece of land the sea has overtaken. There may be some landmarks on the beach, at low tide, but that is all.

‘She looks older than you. Not a lot. But how old is she?’

‘She’s thirty-three.’

‘Well, that’s eight years older than you, Martyn.’

‘So what?’

‘So nothing. Just the fact that she is eight years older than you.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ I asked. We were in the kitchen.

‘Anna Barton, Martyn’s latest girlfriend.’

‘Oh. She’s new, isn’t she?’

‘Oh, God. You make me sound as if I’m some sort of Casanova.’

‘Well, aren’t you?’

‘No.’ Martyn sounded sad. ‘Or if I was once, it’s finished. Well, anyway, I just never met anyone who mattered.’

‘Does she?’

‘Who?’

‘This Anna Burton.’

‘Barton. Anna Barton. I’ve only known her for a few months. Well, she’s more important than the others.’

‘Brighter too,’ said Sally.

‘Oh, you’d recognise a bright girl would you, Sally? She’d be something like you no doubt.’

‘There are many different types of intelligence, Martyn. Mine’s artistic. Yours is for words. That’s all. But you couldn’t draw a cat to save your life.’

The Sally who had blushed or cried at Martyn’s attacks was long gone. She was not close to her brother, and depended on him not at all. The subject of Anna Barton was dropped quietly with the Sunday post-lunch conversation. She was not referred to again by either Martyn or Sally.

‘You don’t like this Anna person then?’ I asked Ingrid as we prepared for bed.

She paused for a long time and then said:

‘No. No, I don’t.’

‘Why? Surely it’s not just because she’s eight years older than Martyn.’

‘Partly. No, she makes me uneasy.’

‘Oh, well it’s probably nothing. Knowing Martyn, it’s just another of his flirtations,’ I said.

‘No, it’s more, I feel sure.’

‘Oh? How did I miss out on meeting her?’

‘She came here a few times last month when you were in Cambridge. Then another time for supper when you were in Edinburgh.’

‘Pretty?’

‘Strange-looking. Not really pretty. Looks her age I thought. Not many girls do nowadays.’

‘You certainly don’t,’ I said to Ingrid. I was bored now with the subject of Anna Barton and I could tell that it distressed Ingrid.

‘Thank you.’ She smiled at me.

And Ingrid certainly did not look close to fifty. The same slim blonde beauty remained, slightly less smooth. The eyes were less bright but she was a beautiful woman, undoubtedly. A woman who would remain beautiful for a very long time to come. She still seemed as impregnable as ever. Blonde, cool, beautiful. My wife Ingrid, Edward’s daughter, Martyn and Sally’s mother.

Her life and mine had run on parallel lines during all these years. No crashes, no unread signals. We were a civilised couple, approaching our later years with equanimity.

E
IGHT

‘A
NNA BARTON, MEET
Roger Hughes.’

‘How do you do?’

The introduction going on behind me seemed as though it were happening in a silent room. In fact I was at the packed Christmas party of a newspaper publisher. In his wife’s Mayfair gallery each year he gathered his world around him in a seductive, dangerous bear-hug. Then everyone was released into a free fall for the rest of the year, as though all the tribulations his paper would cause his guests before the following Christmas were already forgiven.

Why didn’t I look round? Why, out of normal curiosity, or politeness, or concern, did I not approach this girl? Why did ‘How do you do?’ sound singificant? Its formality seemed deliberate. Her voice was very deep, clear and unfriendly.

‘Anna, I want you to see this.’

‘Hello, Dominick.’

Another voice claimed her and she seemed, silently, to move away. I felt uneasy. I felt out of tune with everything. I was preparing to make my goodbyes, when suddenly she stood in front of me and said:

‘You are Martyn’s father. I’m Anna Barton, and I felt I ought to introduce myself.’

The woman who stood before me was tall, pale, with short black wavy hair swept off her face. She was a figure in a black suit and smiled not at all.

‘Hello, I’m so glad to meet you. I seem to have missed you each time you’ve been to the house.’

‘I’ve only been there three times. You’re a busy man.’

It should have sounded abrupt, but it didn’t.

‘How long have you known Martyn?’

‘Not very long.’

‘Oh. I see.’

‘We’ve been …’ she hesitated ‘… close, for about three or four months. I knew him a little before, through work. I work on the same paper.’

‘Oh, yes. I thought I recognised your name when I first heard it.’ We stood silently, I looked away. I looked back. Grey eyes stared straight back into mine, and held them and me, motionless. After a long time she said:

‘How very strange.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I’m going now.’

‘Goodbye,’ I said.

She turned, and walked away. Her tall black-suited body seemed to carve its way through the crowded room and disappeared.

A stillness descended upon me. I sighed a deep sigh, as if I had slipped suddenly out of a skin. I felt old, and content. The shock of recognition had passed through my body like a powerful current. Just for a moment I had met my sort, another of my species. We had acknowledged one another. I would be grateful for that, and would let it slip away.

I had been home. For a moment, but longer than most people. It was enough, enough for my lifetime.

Of course, it wasn’t enough. But in those early hours I was simply grateful that the moment had occurred. I was like a traveller lost in a foreign land who suddenly hears not just his native tongue, but the local dialect he spoke as a boy. He does not ask whether the voice is that of an enemy or a friend, just rushes towards the sweet sound of home. My soul had rushed to Anna Barton. I believed that in such a private matter between myself and God I could freely let it tumble forwards, without fear of damage to heart or mind, body or life.

It is in that essential misreading that many lives stumble. In the utterly wrong idea that we are in control. That we can choose to go, or stay, without agony. After all, I had only lost my soul privately, at a party, where the others could not see.

She rang me the next day.

‘I’m coming to lunch next Sunday. I wanted you to know.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Goodbye.’ The phone went dead.

On Saturday an insanity gripped me. I became convinced that I would die before Sunday. Death would rob me of Sunday. Sunday was now all I wanted. For on Sunday I would sit in the same room as Anna Barton.

On Sunday morning, in what seemed to me the prison of my study, I waited, motionless, for the slamming of the car doors, for the sound of the iron gate on the paving stones and for the reverberations of the bell, which would first warn me, then summon me, to her presence in my house.

I heard my footsteps on the marble hall as I crossed to the sitting-room and above the laughter, the metallic click of the handle as I opened the door to join my family, and Anna.

I had delayed them and, as Martyn with his arm around her shoulders said, ‘Dad, this is Anna,’ Ingrid whisked us all into the dining-room. No one seemed to notice that my breathing had changed.

We all sat down to lunch — Ingrid, Sally, Anna and I, and Martyn.

But of course in reality Ingrid and I sat down with Sally. And Martyn — a different Martyn, tentative, undeniably in love — sat down with Anna.

Anna behaved towards me as any intelligent young woman would, when first meeting the father of her boyfriend. Boyfriend? They must be lovers. Of course they are. They are lovers. Months together. Lovers, of course.

Neither of us mentioned our meeting. Anna concealed even the faintest acknowledgement that such a meeting had ever taken place. Her discretion, at first so soothing in those early minutes, now became the cause of anguish. What kind of woman is such a consummate actress? I thought. How could she be that good?

Her black-dressed body today seemed longer, slightly threatening; frightening even, as she walked from the dining-room to the sitting-room for coffee. This is the first stage with you, I thought, the first barrier. Watch me, watch, I’m your equal.

‘We’re thinking of going to Paris for the weekend.’ Martyn spoke.

‘Who?’

‘Anna and I, of course.’

‘It’s my favourite city.’ Anna smiled at Ingrid.

‘Oh, I don’t really ever enjoy it as much as I hope I will. Something always goes wrong for us in Paris,’ Ingrid replied.

It was true. Whenever we’d been there handbags were stolen, or we’d had a minor car crash, or Ingrid became ill. She’d fallen out of love with Paris. It was an ideal that had never quite been realised.

I heard all this conversation calmly. I smiled as Ingrid said: ‘What a nice idea,’ to Martyn.

The surface remained untroubled, but the ground was beginning to be less firm under my feet. A fault long hidden was being revealed. There was the smallest, briefest tremor, barely worth recording. But the pain that shot through me was so intense, I knew real damage was now being done.

I could not pinpoint what damage, or whether I would recover, or how long it would take. Suffice to know that I was less the man I had been, and more myself … a new strange self.

I was now a liar to my family. A woman I had known only for days, to whom I had spoken only a few sentences, watched me betray my wife and my son. And we both knew the other knew. It seemed a bond between us. A concealed truth, that’s all a lie is.

Either by omission or commission we never do more than obscure. The truth stays in the undergrowth, waiting to be discovered. But nothing was uncovered that Sunday. The small lie, which was the first betrayal, seemed to sink further and further in the laughter, the wine, and the day.

‘Well, what do you think of her?’ Ingrid asked me after they left.

‘Of Anna?’

‘Who else?’

‘She’s strange.’

‘Yes, you can see why I’m worried. Martyn’s completely out of his depth. It’s not just that she’s older … there’s something else. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but she’s wrong for him. Not that he can see it, of course. He is obviously besotted. Sex, I suppose.’

I froze.

‘Oh.’

‘Come on, of course she’s sleeping with him. My God, Martyn’s had more women than …’

‘Than me.’

‘I should hope so too,’ said Ingrid as she came to put her arms around me. But the conversation had devastated me. I kissed her gently, and went to my study.

I stood looking out of the window into the evening light. Anna was now in my home. She was flitting between rooms, between Ingrid and Martyn and me. Yet nothing had happened, nothing at all. Except, of course, her discovered presence in this world.

She was the split-second experience that changes everything; the car smash; the letter we shouldn’t have opened; the lump in the breast or groin; the blinding flash. On my well-ordered stage-set the lights were up, and maybe at last I was waiting in the wings.

N
INE

‘M
ARTYN IS COMING
over for lunch again on Sunday. I think he’s got something to tell us.’

‘What?’

‘I hope it’s not that he is going to marry Anna, but I fear that it is.’

‘Marry her?’

‘Yes. There was something in his voice. Oh, I don’t know. I may be wrong.’

‘He can’t marry her.’ Why do those we have loved half our lives not know when devastation threatens? How can they simply not know?

‘Good God, you sound like a Victorian father. He’s over twenty-one. He can do what he likes. I don’t like that girl. But I know Martyn. If he wants her, he will have her. He’s got your father’s determination.’

I noticed she did not say mine.

‘Well, we must all wait until Sunday,’ she sighed.

The conversation was over. My thoughts went wildly into battle with each other. I was wounded, defended myself, and fought myself again. Silently, while I pretended to read, on and on the battle raged. I was engulfed by anger and fear. Fear that I would never get control of myself again. That I was now uprooted. And by a storm of such force that even if there was a dim possibility of survival, I would be permanently damaged, permanently weakened.

I had not spoken. I had not touched. I had not possessed. But I had recognised her. And in her, had recognised myself.

I needed to get out of the house and walk. The forced stillness of the room was agony. The pain could only be borne by constant, endless movement.

I touched Ingrid’s forehead briefly, and I left the house. How can you not know? Can’t you sense, smell, taste disaster waiting in the corners of the house? Waiting at the bottom of the garden.

I was exhausted when I returned. I slept like some heavy animal, uncertain if it can ever rise again.

T
EN

‘H
ELLO, IT’S ANNA.’

I waited quietly. Knowing that in my life there was now an end and a beginning. Not knowing where the beginning would end.

‘Where are you? Go to your house. I will be there in an hour,’ I said. I took the address and put down the phone.