The Adultery Club (2 page)

We met, the three
of us, twelve years ago in Covent Garden. I had taken my parents to the opera—
La Bohème
, if
memory serves—to mark my father’s seventieth birthday. Having hailed them a taxi, I was strolling alone through the pedestrian piazza en route to the tube station and thence to my rooms in Earl’s Court; I remember wishing that for once there was someone waiting at home for me. Despite the lateness of the hour, the square still boasted its usual collection of street performers, and I was just fending off a rather menacing young man mocked up in heavy black-and-white face paint and thrusting a collection hat under my nose, when I noticed a unicyclist start to lose control of his cycle. It swiftly became clear that this wasn’t part of his act, and for a moment I watched with morbid fascination as he swung back and forth like a human metronome before waking up and pulling myself together. I barely had time to push a young woman out of his path before he toppled into the small crowd.

At the last moment, he managed to throw himself clear of the spectators, executing a neat forward roll on the cobbles and leaping up to bow somewhat shakily to his audience.

I realized I was clasping the young lady rather inappropriately around the chest, and released her with some embarrassment. “I do apologize, I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, please don’t! If it weren’t for you, I’d be squished all over the cobblestones. You must have quick reflexes or something. I didn’t even see him coming.”

She was startlingly pretty. Unruly dark hair the color of molasses, sparkling cinnamon eyes, clear, luminous skin; and the most engaging and infectious smile I had ever seen. In her early twenties, at a guess; fine-boned and petite, perhaps a full foot shy of my six feet two. I could span her waist with my hands. I find small, delicate women incredibly attractive: they bring out the masculine hunter-gatherer in me.

I noticed that the top two buttons of her peasant-style blouse had come undone in the mêlée, revealing a modest swell of lightly tanned bosom cradled in a froth of white
broderie anglaise
. My cock throbbed. Quickly, I averted my eyes.

She stood on tiptoe and gripped my shoulder. At her touch, a tumult of images—that glorious hair tangled in my hands, those slender thighs straddling my waist, my lips on her golden breasts—roared through my brain.

“Oh, Lord, you’ve ripped your coat,” she exclaimed, examining my shoulder seam. “It’s all my fault, wandering around in a
complete
daze, I was thinking about the walnuts, you have to be so careful, of course, don’t you, not everyone likes them, and
now
look at you—”

I have no idea what nonsense I gabbled in return.

“Malinche Sandal,” she said, thrusting her hand at me.

“Ah. Yes. Nicholas Lyon.” I coughed, trying not to picture her hands wrapped around my—“What a very unusual name,” I managed.

“I know.” She grimaced. “My mother is this total hippie; she’s convinced our names determine our characters and the
entire
course of our lives—too much acid in the sixties if you ask me, though perhaps she’s right, you can’t imagine a romantic hero called Cuthbert, can you, or King Wayne, it just doesn’t work—but anyway, she decided better safe than sorry, just to be
quite
sure. My older sister got stuck with Cleopatra, so I suppose I should be grateful I ended up with Malinche; it could have been Boadicea!”

She glanced down, and I realized I was still holding her hand.

With a flush of embarrassment, I released it, praying she hadn’t noticed the tent-pole erection in my trousers.

“Of course! I knew it rang a bell. Malinche was the Indian girl who learned Spanish so that she could help Cortés conquer Mexico in the sixteenth century; without her spying for him he might never have succeeded—” I gave a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Don’t mean to go on. Oxford history degree, can’t help it.”

Malinche laughed delightedly. “No, it’s wonderful! You’re the first person I’ve ever met who’s actually
heard
of her. This is amazing; it must be Fate.” She slipped her arm through mine and grinned up at me with childlike trust. I stiffened, my loins on fire. “Now, how about you let me cook you dinner to say thank you?”

“Oh, but—”

“Please do. You’d be quite safe, I’m a trained chef.”

“But how do you know
you
would be? You don’t even know me.”

“I can always tell,” she said seriously. “You look like the kind of man who would be honest, fair, and, most importantly, optimistic.”

“Well, that is most kind, but—”

“Do you like walnuts?”

“Yes, except in salads, though I don’t quite—”

“We were
meant
to meet this evening, don’t you see, you knew all about my name and that has to be a sign. And you like walnuts—well, except in salads, which don’t count, no one sensible likes walnuts in salads. It’s serendipity. You can’t turn your back on that, can you?”

“It’s not a question of—”

“The thing is,” she added earnestly, tilting her head to one side and looking up at me with those glorious toffee-colored eyes, “I’m trying to write a cookery book and my entire family is just fed up with being
fed
, if you see what I
mean. Even my friends say they’d give anything just to have pizza, and I’m simply
desperate
for a new guinea pig. You seem a very kind, decent man, I’m sure you’re not an ax-murderer or anything—”

“Ted Bundy was handsome and charming and murdered at least thirty-six women,” a laconic voice drawled behind us.

Malinche swung round, spinning me with her. I was beginning to feel a little bemused by the unexpected direction my evening was taking.

“Kit, at last! Where have you been?”

A saturnine young man in his twenties thrust a paper bag at her. “Getting the bloody blue mood crystals you wanted,” he responded tartly. “Who’s the new arm candy?”

“Nicholas Lyon,” I said, overlooking his rudeness and extending my hand.

The young man ignored it, taking possession of Malinche’s free arm and glaring at me as he linked us together in an ungainly ménage à trois which—though I didn’t know it then—was a precursory metaphor for our relationship down the years.

“Oh, Kit, don’t be difficult.” Malinche sighed. “Mr. Lyon, this is Kit Westbrook, my oldest and apparently crossest friend, and one of those very weary guinea pigs I was telling you about. Kit, Mr. Lyon just saved me from being squashed by a runaway unicyclist, and tore his very smart coat in the process. Help me persuade him to come back with us for dinner; he’s being
far
too polite about it all.”

“Nicholas, please.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Kit said, clearly meaning it very much, “but Mal, you don’t know this man from Adam. You
can’t
just go round inviting strange men home
for dinner, even if they do rescue you from certain death by circus performer.”

“Your friend is right,” I concurred regretfully. “You really shouldn’t take such risks, although I’m not actually a psychopathic serial killer, which suddenly makes me feel rather dull—”

Malinche pealed with laughter. “See?” she said, as if that settled everything. In the end, of course, it did.

I realized right from the start that Kit wasn’t a rival for Malinche in the usual sense of the word. He was always too flamboyantly dressed to be anything other than homosexual—in the midst of the dress-down, austere nineties, he sported velvet frock coats and waterfall lace cravats and knew the names for a dozen different shades of beige. But as far as Kit was concerned, Malinche was
his
best friend, and even now, after a decade of marriage and three children, he still hasn’t quite accepted that she possesses a husband who has first call upon her. And then there was the matter of Trace Pitt, of course.

Nothing is ever quite as it seems with Kit. He is, after all, an actor. In fairness, though, I must admit he’s been a conscientious godfather, always remembering birthdays and the like. And the girls adore him. Not necessarily my first choice; but there we are.

My secretary ushers my
four o’clock appointment into my office. I wish I’d thought to remind Mal to bring William’s retirement gift with her. In her current mood, she’d
quite likely to bake it and wrap the birthday cake instead. For the life of me, I can’t recall what she said she’d bought, but I’m quite certain it will be eminently appropriate. Mal’s gifts always are; she just has that feminine knack. I always leave Christmas and birthdays entirely to her, even for my side of the family. She’s just so much better at it.

Firmly putting personal matters out of my mind, I pull a pad of paper toward me and unscrew the lid of my fountain pen. It’s not as if Kit could ever do anything to undermine my marriage. We’re far too strong for that.

Mr. Colman is a new client, so I take detailed longhand notes as he describes the unhappy route that has led him here, to the grim finality of a divorce lawyer’s office. He’s aptly named, with hair the color of mustard and a sallow cast to his skin. Once we have established the basics, I explain the bureaucratic procedure of divorce, the forms that must be filed, the documents supplied, the time and the cost—financial only; the emotional price he will soon discern himself—involved.

“We want it all to be amicable,” he interrupts brightly. “There’s no need to run up huge bills arguing over the plasma TV; we’ve both said that. We just want to get on with it, make a clean break of things. For the children’s sakes.”

I refrain from telling him that it’s not about the plasma television, it’s never about the
television;
at least to begin with. It’s about a husband dumping his wife of twenty years for a younger, bustier model. It’s about a wife jettisoning her balding husband for a Shirley Valentine affair with the Italian ski instructor. It’s about disappointment, hurt, banality, and betrayal. But because you cannot quantify any of these things, in the end it
does
come down to the television, and the spoons,
and that hideous purple vase Great-aunt Bertha gave you as a wedding present that you’ve both always hated, and which you will now spend thousands of pounds fighting to own.

All but a handful of my clients—the hardened marital veterans, repeat customers who’ve been divorced before—sit before me and tell me they want their divorce to be amicable. But if they were capable of resolving their differences amicably, they wouldn’t be in my office in the first place.

“And the grounds for the petition?” I ask briskly.

Always a revealing moment, this. For the first time, Mr. Colman looks uncomfortable. I know instantly there is another woman in the wings. I gently explain to my client that if his wife has not deserted him or committed adultery—he responds with almost comic indignation that she has not—and will not agree to a divorce, as the law stands he will either have to wait five years to obtain his freedom without her consent, or else cobble together a charge of unreasonable behavior.

“I can’t wait five years!” he exclaims. “I’ve only been married to the bitch for four! I call
that
un-fucking-reasonable.”

The path from amicable to Anglo-Saxon has been even shorter than usual.

“Mr. Colman, please. Let us be calm. It is my experience that the wife can usually be persuaded to divorce her husband, if there are sufficient grounds, rather than face a charge of unreasonable behavior.
Are
there such grounds?” He nods curtly. “Then I feel sure we can persuade
her
to divorce
you.”

“Going to cost me, though, isn’t it?” he says bitterly. “She’ll take me to the fucking cleaners.”

“It’s more a question of weighing up what is most important to you, and focusing on that,” I say neutrally.

It is with relief that I finally bid the intemperate Mr. Colman farewell some fifty minutes later. Working at the grimy coal face of marital breakdown is never pleasant, but usually I draw comfort from the thought that my interposition makes palatable what is unavoidably a very bitter pill for most of my clients. At five o’clock on a bleak November Friday, however, after a very long week dealing with the Mrs. Stephensons and Mr. Colmans of this world, it’s hard to feel anything other than despair at the intractable nature of human relationships.

The better part of two decades as a divorce lawyer has brought me no closer to fathoming how people find themselves in these painful imbroglios. I know that old-fashioned morality is very passé these days, but having witnessed the destruction and misery that infidelity wreaks—and adultery is invariably the rock upon which the marital ship founders—I can say with some authority that a quick how’s-your-father in the broom cupboard is
never
worth it.

My view is skewed, of course, by the scars of my own childhood. But an inbuilt bias toward fidelity is, I think, a
good
thing.

I realize, of course, how lucky I am to have a happy marriage. Mal firmly believes that Fate meant us to be together—her
bashert
, she calls me. Yiddish for “destined other,” apparently (she spent a summer on a kibbutz with a Jewish boyfriend when she was seventeen). I’m afraid I don’t believe in that kind of superstitious Destiny nonsense, any more than I do horoscopes or tarot cards; but I’m only too aware how rare it is these days to attain your fifth wedding anniversary, never mind your tenth.