The Man Who Forgot His Wife (27 page)

I occupied just one side of the double bed, as I always did. I’d only just realized that I instinctively preferred to take the left half of the mattress, subconsciously leaving the other side free. But now I was staring at a piece of paper that would do away with the need for such considerations.

I had verbally agreed to all the terms in this legal document some time ago; now all I had to do was sign the embossed papers where indicated, in front of a witness, and return it in the
expensive-looking
stamped addressed envelope and my marriage would be history. It was just a five-second task of signing my name, yet during four whole days of doing nothing I had still not found the time to do it. I had placed the document on the rickety bedside table, but now clambered off the crumpled blankets and hid it out of sight amid the clutter on the other side of the room. It wasn’t just the final act of formally ending the marriage that crippled me, but that extra little humiliation of having to ask a witness to watch me sign the form.

I had wondered if could ask the fat man from the former Soviet republic of Something-astan who ran the Hi Klass Hotel. Except that I sensed he rather resented the way that I paid the nightly tariff for my room and then proceeded to sleep in it for the entire night. Every time I saw him, I felt guilty that I wasn’t sheepishly vacating my room fifteen minutes after arrival. I could always ask one of the ladies who regularly entertained clients here, I thought.
Witness Occupation: Prostitute
. That would look impressive.

Overhearing people having sex did not particularly lighten my depressed state. Occasionally I thought about that moment in the gym store, but it had clearly left me feeling empty. More significant than the physical experience of the night with Suzanne was the recovery of my memories of sex with Madeleine. These weren’t summoned up to be titillating or erotic, but prior to recovering them it was almost as if I’d been ending a marriage that had never been consummated.

I remembered that Maddy talked during sex. Not in the way that women are scripted in male fantasies – she didn’t groan an ecstatic ‘Oh, that is amazing! Oh yes, yes!’ That wasn’t really Madeleine’s style. No, on the particular night of passion that came to mind we were in the final throes of sexual intercourse and, as I grunted and grimaced with Maddy lying beneath me, she suddenly said, ‘Oh, I must remember to give in the form for Dillie’s school trip …’

I recalled that she had often done this. When I’d imagined that
she
was totally consumed in the ardour and intimacy of the moment, she would volunteer the information that she had booked the car in for a service, or would wonder out loud whether she could move that chiropodist’s appointment from Monday to Wednesday. I doubt that these were lines you’d ever hear in a pornographic movie: a beefy, oiled-up gym instructor having athletic sex with a silicon-breasted peroxide blonde, who in the moment of climax mumbles, ‘Oh no – I forgot to post Mum’s birthday card!’

But I suppose what Maddy had really been saying was that she was very comfortable with me; that she knew me really, really well. That’s how used to one another we had been – completely familiar with our partner’s quirks and idiosyncrasies. Like the two trees in our garden that had grown side by side, their trunks intertwining over the decades to accommodate and support one another.

And then I recovered another memory. It was an argument that had begun with Maddy wanting to throw out a plastic shower curtain and me insisting that it just needed cleaning.

‘Just needs cleaning by me, is what you mean,’ she says. ‘Because it would never occur to you to clean a shower curtain.’

‘But a shower curtain doesn’t need cleaning; it has a shower every day.’

‘Yeah, you take a shower every day and I have a bath, and you said you would clean the shower, so why didn’t you clean the curtain as well?’

‘Because I forgot, okay? I forgot to clean the curtain when I cleaned the shower. I forgot, just like everything else that you endlessly point out that Vaughan forgets …’

But the argument wasn’t about that at all: it was actually about sex as well. The previous evening I had suggested that we had intercourse and she had said no, and we had not so much as touched one another for weeks, and I felt angry and frustrated.

‘You notice a bit of grime on the curtain, but you don’t even notice your own husband,’ I say, escalating the conflict
.

‘What?’

‘You care more about a bit of black mould in the shower than you care about me.’

‘Why are you being so horrible?’

‘Oh, look, the lid is off the toothpaste because Vaughan forgot to put it back on!’ and I run to the toothpaste and make a big show of replacing the lid. ‘Ooh, look, the toilet seat is up because Vaughan forgot to put it down.’ And I slam down the toilet lid. ‘Well, it’s better than forgetting you’re supposed to be married to someone!’

I was able to place this incident to about a year before we had separated. The drama churned over in my head and I felt ashamed that my sexual frustration had translated into anger in such an extreme manner. But, with hindsight, I now understood that sex is so important in keeping a marriage together that it really shouldn’t be left to husband and wife alone. There are people who come round to check your burglar alarm and window locks; we have health checks and visits to the dentist, and an engineer who makes sure the gas boiler is safe. There really ought to be someone from the council who pops round regularly to make sure that married couples are having sex every weekend. ‘Hmm … I see there’s a two-week gap at the beginning of the month. I’m going to have to log that in the system, and it means you will receive an official letter warning you of the dangers of neglecting physical intimacy.’

The document from my ex-wife’s solicitors had to be signed. I owed it to Maddy. I pulled on my shoes and threw on a jacket and quickly checked myself in the mirror before I presented myself to the outside world. Then I took my jacket off again, removed my shoes and went to shower and shave. I gave the bottom of the shower curtain a wipe down before I was finished.

My reintegration into civilization seemed to go unnoticed by the rest of society: evening shoppers passed me by, busy
commuters
were more focused on their own journeys home than noticing the lonely man forcing himself to keep walking down the high street despite having no particular place to go. It reminded me of my time before I found my true identity, the sense of separateness from the rest of the world, as if everyone else knew the part they were playing but I’d never been given a script. Inside my jacket pocket, however, was the death certificate for my marriage that I had set myself the task of posting. In my head I was scrolling through all the people who could witness my signature, but somehow I didn’t want to admit my final failure to any of my friends.

I walked two miles and found myself at the front door of the only person I felt I could ask. I had never been here before, but I had memorized the address from when I had worked in the school office. Suzanne, the dance teacher, seemed very surprised and a little alarmed to see me.

‘Vaughan! What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

‘Sorry not to call – my mobile’s flat. I came to ask a favour.’

‘Er – it’s not very convenient …’ She glanced back down the hallway.

‘Who is it?’ said a gruff man from inside the flat.

‘Just someone from school.’

Despite Suzanne’s acute embarrassment, I persuaded her that this wouldn’t take more than a minute, and I was whisked into the kitchen where I produced the divorce agreement for her to witness and sign. The nature of the favour threw her yet further.

‘Vaughan,’ she whispered, ‘I don’t want you to divorce your wife just because of what happened the other night …’

‘No, I was going to divorce her anyway.’

‘I mean, Brian and I are very happy. I can’t leave him for you, Vaughan, just like that – just because of one naughty little fling.’

‘No, really. I just needed someone to witness my signature, and I was just passing, so …’

‘You won’t tell anyone what happened, will you?’ She glanced nervously in the direction of the lounge where Brian was watching a home improvement programme. ‘I mean, I was drunk and you were drunk and it didn’t mean anything, did it?’

Her name was hastily scribbled and signed. It was barely legible, but the deed was done.

I stood before the pillar box, nervously double-checking that the envelope was properly sealed and that the stamps would not fall off. Then, in a short private ceremony, The Future formally surrendered to The Past and I put the letter in the box. Rather than return to my dismal hotel room, I picked up a free news paper and went into a high-street ‘tavern’. The pub had got a signwriter to advertise its many attractions in old-fashioned Shakespearean script. This worked quite well for ‘Ye Real Ales’ and ‘Ye Fine Foods’ but looked less convincing for ‘Sky Sports in High Definition’. Even with the sound turned down, the large TV screen was impossible to ignore, as the silent presenters on Sky News searched for the least appropriate footage to match the song playing on the pub jukebox. Images of floods in Bangladesh served as an edgy rock video for Lady Gaga. The remains of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan added an extra poignancy to a new power ballad from the latest winner of
The X Factor
. The info-bar scrolled the changes in the stock markets or Europa League football scores as I finished a third packet of pork scratchings and tied the foil packets into tiny knots. A couple came into the pub hand in hand, and I was disgusted by such an ostentatious public display of sexual passion.

In the toilets I paused for a while to stare at the craggy face of the man whose life I had inherited. ‘You stupid idiot!’ I shouted at my reflection. ‘You only get one life, and you completely screwed your one up, didn’t you, eh?’

Perhaps the drink had made me slightly aggressive, but right now the only person I wanted to fight was myself. ‘You don’t
know
your own kids! Your wife hates you. You can’t even remember people’s names, you senile bastard—’

Then a slurred voice spoke up from behind a locked cubicle door. ‘Who is this? How do you know so much about me?’

I set off to walk the length of Streatham High Road, the night lit briefly by the blue strobe of a passing police car. Alcohol used to make me excited and up for a laugh, but these days it just made me really drowsy. Throw a party for people in their forties and too much alcohol just makes everyone want to go home and go to bed. ‘Oh wow, look at all this vodka! I’m going to drink a whole bottle and get completely … tired.’ ‘Yeah, and then let’s have a load of tequila slammers so we get like, really, really
sleepy
.’

Walking down the wide, uneven pavement, I found myself over-compensating for the sudden appearance of a litter bin and, in trying to give it a wide berth, I nearly staggered into some bike racks where bicycle frames could be locked up if you didn’t want their wheels any more. Finally I skipped up the steps to the hotel front door, displaying a certain casual aplomb, I felt. But aiming the front-door key accurately at the uncooperative lock was a more demanding challenge and I missed the keyhole several times, unaware that I was using the wrong key anyway.

I leaned against the unlocked door and discovered it just needed pushing open, then I was surprised to see someone sitting in the chair in the corridor. Occasionally this seat was occupied by punters waiting for a lady, or a lady waiting for a room, and in my drunken confusion I could not work out why my ex-wife Madeleine was now working as a prostitute at the Hi Klass Hotel in Streatham.

‘Maddy? What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

‘Hello, Vaughan,’ she said calmly.

She looked deadly serious, and now that I had worked out that she was here to see me, her unexpected appearance at this time of night, looking as ragged and red-eyed as this, alarmed me.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I blustered. ‘I posted it today. I had to get a
witness
signature and so I asked, well, I asked a teacher at school, but I didn’t get round to it till today, but I have sent it off, I promise—’

‘It’s not that. We’ve been trying to ring you, to find out where you were …’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Your father. It happened in his sleep. I don’t think he suffered. I’m so sorry.’

I could almost feel my body sobering up as I stood there trying to comprehend the shocking but not at all shocking news that my father had died.

‘But – that’s not fair,’ I heard myself blurting out. ‘That’s just not fair.’

‘I’m really sorry, Vaughan,’ repeated Maddy, but I felt too numb to respond. My grief was for something I hadn’t had. He’d died before I had got to know him properly or before memories of him had returned. Was that selfish of me, I worried – shouldn’t I have automatically loved my father on first meeting, and now grieve him as any child would mourn a lost parent?

‘Oh. God. That’s so sad …’ Maddy and I just stood there for a moment looking at one another. And then she put her arms out to embrace me and I accepted the invitation. Now my emotions were really confused. Just as I had been getting to know my dad, my only living parent had been taken from me. I was angry that my stupid broken brain had denied me the chance to know him better. But mixed in with all of this was the realization that the woman I had given up on was hugging me, and it felt right. And tentatively, I put my arms around her and hugged her back. Was it wrong to
like
this?

‘It’s what he would have wanted,’ I told myself.

Chapter 19

IT WAS A
touching and selfless gesture. That Maddy could put all her pain aside to comfort her former adversary in his moment of loss would have been enough to restore anyone’s faith in human nature. The only slight blemish upon the tenderness of the scene was the hotel manager munching on a kebab and saying, ‘You no fuck hoe in lobby. You pay for room. Condom three pounds extra.’