East Fortune (23 page)

‘The pain's worse.'

‘I'll pop in and see him. Your mother is determined to keep him at home.'

‘You mean he should be in hospital?'

‘Or a hospice. Then we could monitor him more consistently. But he's more cheerful at home, and it lets your mother feel that it's not as serious as it is…'

‘And it is serious…'

‘I'm afraid you reach a stage when there's not much more you can do.'

‘And we've reached that stage?'

Dr Hunter was not going to commit to any kind of resignation.

‘Hope is always important…'

‘I see.'

Angus remembered him jogging through the country lanes with his wife. Thirty years ago they had been so full of vitality. Now he was treating the children of the patients he had seen as babies.

‘Try to keep him comfortable, and I'll see what I can do about the pain,' Dr Hunter said. ‘There may be more time than we think. There's no point giving up just yet.'

Angus remembered his father singing Harry Lauder songs on long car journeys.

Keep right on to the end of the road.

Douglas wished he could find a way of seeing Julia more regularly. He tried to find an excuse to meet her in London and sent her coded text messages that received guarded replies. She did not want him to come. London was impossible. The risk of being seen together was too great. They would have to wait until she was going to some other European city.

He knew that he should forget all about her; that if he left it for long enough the memory would fade and he could return to whatever normality he had left. But in the gaps between work and home, in the moments when he did not have to concentrate, every empty thought filled with her. He stopped when he saw people in the street who looked like her or who wore similar clothes. He read the books she had mentioned and looked up the exhibitions she had organised on the Internet. He found her perfume in a department store, opened the bottle and drank in the smell of her: Josephine by François Rancé.

He thought he was going mad. His only consolation was to drink enough red wine to sleep his way through the anxiety.

Even then he dreamed of Julia. They were together in foreign cities and hotel rooms, walking through streets, sitting in outdoor cafés, waking in soft beds with nothing else to do but be with each other. He could see her leaving at airports and then coming forward to greet him. He tried to recall every part of her body, the softness of her upper thigh, the magnified pores of her skin, the fall of her hair as she slept.

One morning, as he tried to sleep off his hangover, he was half
woken by Emma moving in and out of the room. He was used to the sound of her getting up before him, holding her tights to the light to see if they were navy or black, dressing quietly so as not to disturb him but then coming back into the room ten minutes later and changing into something different because the first outfit she had chosen was ‘hopeless'.

On most days she dressed quietly and let him sleep but now she was emptying the laundry basket. It had become something of a Saturday-morning routine. She created separate piles on the floor, dividing whites from colours, putting other clothes aside for dry-cleaning. Douglas remembered that they were due at a party in Edinburgh that night and so she was probably thinking about what she was going to wear. After fourteen years of marriage Douglas could predict her movements in and out of the room and had learned not to ask any questions or say anything about the noise. He was lucky she took charge of all the laundry, he thought. In fact, he was lucky about most things in his marriage. He really had nothing to complain about and no excuse for indiscretion. He would just let his wife get on with the laundry, doze a little longer and then work his way through a couple of cafetiéres of coffee.

He listened to the lid of the laundry basket opening and closing. He could hear the shirts being unbuttoned and shaken out, and the fall of jackets and trousers as they were thrown on to the chair by the window. Emma was unusually aggressive, working at speed, getting the job done as quickly as possible. Douglas did not know what the hurry was for. He could hear her going through pockets, pulling out handkerchiefs, bus tickets, receipts and loose change and then
Christ…

‘What is this?'

Even then, he knew. He should have thrown it away as Julia had told him but he had wanted to hold on to it.

‘Douglas…'

‘What?'

‘Look at me.'

His wife was holding Julia's letter. Douglas almost knew it by heart. He certainly remembered the end:

Lonely, obsessed, confused, intoxicated, sensual, paranoid Julia

‘What's this?'

‘It's nothing. Bits of a script.' He turned away.

‘It's not your handwriting.'

He could picture the weird dance steps and the German text.

‘No, it's just some research.'

‘Research? It doesn't read like research. Look at me, Douglas.'

It was the last thing he wanted to do.

‘Who is Julia?'

‘A researcher,' he said.

‘I hope you're not going to deny it.'

‘Deny what?'

‘Oh for God's sake. Just answer my question properly. Who is Julia?'

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘I think it does. I think it matters more than anything has ever mattered – certainly in our marriage if you have any desire to hold on to it.'

‘Of course I do.'

‘How long has this been going on?'

‘Nothing's been going on.'

‘Oh really? When did you first meet her?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I'm sorry, Douglas. You seem to be under the impression that I am very stupid.'

‘I have never thought that.'

‘More stupid than her, obviously.'

‘You're not. You're much cleverer than her…'

‘Who is she?'

‘She works for the British Council.'

‘I don't think her profession has got much to do with it.'

‘She organises lectures and conferences.'

‘And why is she lonely, obsessed, confused, intoxicated, sensual, and, it appears, paranoid?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Is she your lover?'

‘I don't want to talk about this.'

‘That means she is.'

‘It doesn't mean anything.'

‘Oh for God's sake.'

Emma threw the letter on to the bed.

‘Who is this fucking bitch?'

‘She's not a bitch.'

‘What is she then?'

‘Someone I met.'

‘You did more than meet her, you bastard. What did you think you were doing?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Is she married?'

‘I think so.'

‘God, you don't even know that.'

‘Yes, I do, she is.'

‘And does she have children?'

‘Two.'

‘Oh well, that's all right then. I suppose she won't mind having some more then.'

‘That's got nothing to do with it.'

‘It's got everything to do with it.'

‘I didn't want children. We discussed this. Everything was all right.'

He wished he could have been more discreet, or kept silent, denied everything.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Sorry? Is that all?'

‘I don't know what else to say.'

‘You're pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.'

It wasn't so much the infidelity, Emma said, as the fact that he had done so little to avert it. Douglas had surely seen it coming. He could have talked to her and even if he had made one drunken ‘error of judgement' (such a ridiculous phrase, but Emma couldn't think of anything else) then they could have spoken and done something about it. But this appeared to be a sustained and secret operation that had been carried out behind her back for months.

‘Part of me wants to know everything,' said Emma. ‘Whether
I've met her, what she looks like, what she wears, what attracted you to her – everything. Did you know that you were going to do this from the start? Did you do anything at all to stop it – although obviously you can't have done because you wanted to and you were just too fucking selfish to stop, I can see that – but I'd like to know whether
at any stage
you thought of me and what you were doing and whether it might, it just might, you know, be
the wrong thing to do…'

‘Of course I did…'

‘Don't interrupt.'

‘I'm not interrupting.'

‘
You are.'

‘I didn't want to hurt you.'

‘You suppose that makes it all right?'

‘I'm not saying that.'

‘What are you saying?'

‘I don't know, I was lonely, I didn't mean to do it; I thought I could avoid hurting you or you finding out.'

‘Every word in that sentence is rubbish and you know it.'

‘I don't know. I don't know anything any more. Perhaps I did it because I thought you'd be better off without me.'

‘I think I'm the one that decides that.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘I don't understand you at all. You've kept this letter when you could have destroyed it. Perhaps you wanted me to find out all along and didn't have the courage to tell me face to face. The next thing you'll be telling me is that you only did it as a favour to make our marriage stronger or that I should be grateful to you for giving me the excuse to leave.'

‘I don't think that.'

‘It never occurred to me to be unfaithful, do you know that? Even though I work in the theatre and people somehow expect it of me. They assume, because I am an
actress,
that this is what happens, that I must have so many opportunities and I'm always at it but I'm not. It's not in my DNA. But you – one whiff of an opportunity and your trousers are down and in you go.'

‘It wasn't like that.'

‘No? Well, what was it like? Actually, no, don't tell me. I really
don't want to know about your sordid four-minute sessions in hotel rooms round the world or wherever you
fucking
did it. In fact, come to think of it, I'd rather know nothing. I've heard enough of your so-called confession – the one that's supposed to make our marriage stronger.'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘I'm the one doing the talking.
So in fact what I'd like to happen, what I'd like you to do now is just leave, get out, don't talk to me, keep your dirty little secrets to yourself.'

‘I don't know where to go.'

‘There's a hotel round the corner, you can stay there – or why don't you just move in with her?'

‘It's complicated.'

‘What? It's
complicated?
Of course it's fucking complicated. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. But now, of course, it seems that everyone
is
doing it. I suppose you could always just fuck off and live with her.'

‘I can't do that.'

‘Why? Because she's married?'

‘She won't leave her kids.'

‘Do you really think I need to know this? Is that supposed to make me understand that she has some kind of conscience? Can you not see that every sentence you utter is full of the most
complete crap anyone has ever heard?'

‘Don't be so vile.'

‘Well, I'm sorry. Perhaps you should have thought this might happen. Perhaps, when you were taking your trousers down, you should have stopped and thought – do you know what – maybe I shouldn't be doing this, maybe I should stop – put it away, pull my trousers back up, leave the room, or wherever you were, maybe it was some crap toilet in an airport, I don't know – and never see her again. But then it was too late, I suppose. Then you were “committed”, as you are supposed to be to me – well, you were supposed to be to me – but that's all gone now. I could just about forgive the drinking and the absences and the selfishness and the sheer lack of awareness of anything to do with me. I know you didn't really want children but I did. I wanted two or three, in fact, but now of course off you go and fuck someone else and soon there'll probably be a
whole nursery of little Douglas Hendersons popping out all over the place and how do you think I'll feel? How do you think I'll live with that?'

‘It won't be like that.'

‘No? What will it be like then? Do you think we can just carry on after this and pretend nothing has happened – or that you could go on seeing her? Perhaps we could have her round to dinner and you could compare the two of us face to face. Tell you what: let's invite the whole family round. You could turn it into a reality show on television.
Wife or Mistress
–
the Family Decides.
Then the public could vote. You'll probably need the money by the time I've finished.'

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

‘I'm not being ridiculous.'

‘I wish I hadn't told you.'

‘Well, it's a bit late for that.'

‘Couldn't you tell that something was wrong?'

‘
Of course I could tell.
I just didn't expect you to be such a walking cliché. I thought you had a bit more muscle than that. A bit more moral fibre. But clearly you haven't.'

Emma sat down on the chair by the window.

Douglas hoped that it had all come out and there would be no more.

‘At least we've talked about it.'

‘And that's all we're going to talk. I can't face speaking to you any more. You'll have to do it through lawyers from now on.'

‘Already?'

‘Yes, already, Douglas. You don't expect me to forgive you, do you?'

‘No. But isn't it a bit soon for lawyers?'

‘No. It's a bit late. I should have seen it coming, found out sooner, acted more quickly, and then I would have been spared all this
crap.'