The Man Who Turned Into Himself (8 page)

Anne was unfaithful.

***

Richard spent the next day in bed with a temperature, no appetite and a headache. Agnes the housekeeper stayed on a few hours extra to keep him supplied with mint tea, vitamins, and whatever else he needed during the day while Anne was out.

I, meanwhile, was near demented. Not only was the pain of what I had discovered all but unbearable, but my impotence to do anything about it was driving me to distraction. I paced, metaphorically, back and forth in his brain for hour upon hour, wringing my hands and cudgelling my brains for an answer.

While he lay there like a sack of potatoes, sipping lemon-flavoured flu remedies, blowing his nose and blearily watching daytime television, I was being driven insane by lurid fantasies of where Anne might be, what she might be doing, and with whom.

In a sense, of course, it was none of my business. These people's lives were their own affair and I had no right to interfere. But, like all moral arguments, such a proposition had little or no place in the real world in which I found myself.

I was aware — how could I not be? — that the true source of my anguish was not what
this
Anne was doing, but what
my
Anne
might
have been capable of, might even have done, without my ever knowing. Could I have been living in a dream world, a fool's paradise all that time? Was — Heaven forgive me for the thought — was Charlie mine? There was no way now I could know anything for sure, but the more I could find out about
this
Anne in
this
life, the more chance I would have of understanding my own Anne in
our
life. I was fully aware that I might come up with some things about her which I had not previously suspected and which would be painful to confront. But I had no choice. I had to know.

And this passive, flu-ridden, steaming lump of lard had to find out for me. If that meant his finding out some painful truths for himself, so be it. I was ruthless in my desperation.

But how was I to make him do it? He suspected nothing.
Nothing!
It had never crossed his impossibly complacent mind that his wife might be unfaithful. To him their lives were on track and headed towards their preset goals. I wasn't even sure, when I came to think about it, how he'd take the news that he'd been cuckolded. Would he 
be devastated? Philosophical? Indifferent? Dangerous?

Supposing he committed suicide? Blew his brains out — and me with them.

I was facing a double problem: how to alert him to what was going on; and how to exercise at least some control over his response.

And suddenly — Eureka — I saw that I had stumbled on the answer to all my problems at once. Even before the shock of Anne's betrayal I had been searching for a way to communicate with Richard without throwing him once more into panic and confusion. Now I had it. I had the means not only to open a dialogue but also, I was fairly sure, to influence his behaviour. I saw now how I could make him accept me as a natural part of himself that must be listened to, not some alien invader to be fled from and resisted.

I would be the Voice of Jealousy.

The whole plan unfolded in my mind with an appalling simplicity. After all, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a voice in your head saying 'I am your alter ego from another universe' is not necessarily to be trusted, and you may be wise to avoid operating heavy machinery until it goes away.

But the still, small voice of jealousy, that worm of doubt eating away at the back of your brain, that is a voice with a name to it, a voice you know about. Listening to that voice does not necessarily mean you are going crazy. Cloaked in that universal metaphor, I could step forward with confidence to centre stage and make my presence known at last.

Being feverish, Richard was in a particularly vulnerable state of mind. It seemed natural that thoughts should float into his consciousness from heaven knows where, trailing with them strings of free association leading to destinations as unknown as their origins. His resistance was low, he was suggestible. He thought he could indulge himself in fantasy and discard it when it suited him. He was wrong. This thought, my thought, once planted would not go away.

Within an hour I had convinced him that he, not I, had 
overheard that snatch of conversation between Anne and her lover on the telephone. He couldn't be sure whether he'd dreamed it, or whether it had actually happened while he was half-awake. That doubt would not let go of him. I had him.

Towards the end of the afternoon Harold, back from Phoenix, called to ask how he was. He'd heard from Richard's secretary that he was ill and wanted to know if there was anything he could do. Richard almost asked him to come over right then so that he could pour out his wretchedness to the one man he had always trusted. At least Harold would know the name of a discreet private investigator should he need one. But he checked himself and merely mumbled rheumily that he expected to be over the worst by tomorrow.

Would that were true.

Anne seemed unaware of the suspicion in his eyes when she arrived home. She had a sparkle and a glow about her that deepened his depression into a despair. He tossed two effervescent vitamin Cs listlessly into a glass of water and stirred them with a pencil, which Anne took from him, saying that he'd get lead poisoning. She was telling him about her day, but he couldn't bring himself to listen. Too much of it might be lies, and he still couldn't bear to let her lie to him.

That night Anne, at his insistence, slept in the guest room because his wheezing and his coughing and his endless turning would only have kept them both awake. He couldn't face a night-long, sleepless silence between them.

I used the long dark hours to good advantage, filling his fitful sleep with graphic dreams of Anne in strangers' arms (culled from my memories of her times in mine), and his waking hours with the taunting voice of sexual self (or so he thought) mockery at his own inadequacies. The process afforded me no pleasure, but the situation offered no alternative.

By morning Richard A. Hamilton was my surrogate.

As predicted, the worst of the flu was over in twenty-four 
hours. Richard, however, instead of rushing back to the office as he had intended, decided to spend another day at home to recuperate fully. At least that was the story he told Anne. He also told Agnes that she needn't stay on any later than usual, he would be quite all right alone.

He spent the afternoon in a frantic search for incriminating evidence of Anne's secret life. The backs of shelves, the bottoms of wardrobes, the deepest recesses of her clothes closet, purses, luggage, pockets, bedside tables, bathroom cabinets and kitchen drawers. Nothing. My ingenuity was running out, as his had long since. Only my insistence kept him going. But he was beginning to resist. He wanted to believe he was mistaken, that his suspicions were no more than the product of a flu-ridden, feverish imagination. He was trying to turn his back on the awful doubts that had beset him.

But that, of course, was an impossibility. We can no more ignore doubt than we can pretend we feel no guilt or superstitious fear. It is one of those plants that flourishes without our help, mocking our attempts to stifle, poison, starve, or cut it down. Richard knew that the failure of his search proved nothing — except, perhaps, the carefulness with which she was conducting her affair.

Or affairs, plural. Oh, yes, yes, yes, I still had him by the nose, his bid for freedom swiftly curtailed by the nagging Voice of Jealousy that threatened to follow him wherever he ran.

The next plan was surveillance. If we followed her for, say, a week or two and found her behaviour irreproachable, then even I might be willing to reinterpret what I had heard of that phone call in a more favourable light. Of course I didn't believe for a minute that this would be the case, but the assurance helped Richard get over his scruples about stooping so low as to spy on his wife.

One thing I was determined he should not do was hire an investigator. If I was to maintain and strengthen my hold over him, the last thing I needed was an outside confidant entering his life. I was already doing my best to dissuade him from talking to Harold — on the grounds that he would look a fool if his suspicions did in fact prove to be unfounded. Only if I had him to myself could I achieve what I needed to achieve.

So Richard took to playing detective. He had a dismally feeble imagination, but again I was able to prod him towards some kind of organised plan. Obviously it was impossible single-handedly to mount a twenty-four-hour-a-day surveillance, even though, anyway, at least twelve of those hours were spent in our company. The trick lay in divining through casual conversation, along with the odd furtive dip into her calendar, where she was going to be at different times of day — those endless meetings and committees, workouts and luncheons which were the fabric of her life. Then a phone call to leave a casual message, a drink with an acquaintance who had also been there, a suggestion that he pick her up for dinner at such and such a time and such and such a place — all these little strategies, put together, made it inevitable that very soon any lies she tried to get away with would begin to stand out like fingerprints on glass.

During all this time — about ten days — I was surprised by how well Richard withstood the inevitable stress and strain involved. To say that I felt a hint of admiration for him would be going too far, but I began to suspect that my previous scorn for his lack of moral courage may have been fractionally exaggerated. Outwardly he appeared utterly untroubled. Anne, I am sure, suspected nothing. When they made love — which they did three times during the period in question — he performed faultlessly and, if anything, with slightly more enthusiasm than normal. Only I knew that he had stepped into a porno theatre the previous Thursday and was reliving the main feature with gusto.

In the end, however, the turning-point came with surprising speed. He was just beginning to suspect that this whole thing had been a storm about nothing (and, to be honest, so was I; I was beginning to wonder what new disguise I could adopt after the Voice of Jealousy had been finally and firmly 
set aside) when all the little red flags that I had planted in his head stood on their ends and quivered.

Nine days earlier Anne had made a strange mark in her diary: 'B.M.', with a line running through the whole of Tuesday afternoon. Normally she wrote down enough to make clear what she was referring to — this committee or that friend, or such and such a restaurant or somebody's house. But 'B.M.' stood unqualified and cryptic in its isolation. Casually over dinner one night he had led the conversation by circuitous routes around to that particular afternoon, and had divined that she had lately been elected to a special steering committee for the forthcoming charity ball in aid of the City War Museum — a great honour, for which he expressed his approval. Naturally he didn't ask what relevance 'B.M.' had to the event, since this would have meant admitting that he had pried into her calendar.

But when the same 'B.M.' appeared again two days later, with yet another line scratched through the afternoon, he knew now that he must verify her story.

This time, in response to his subtle, cautious questioning, she said that she had spent the afternoon with her friend Valerie looking at collections of fall fashions. He didn't know Valerie well enough to call up and check, but he didn't need to. The inconsistency was proof enough. The iron fist of jealousy tightened its grip, and he prepared himself for a final confrontation with the truth.

It came the following Monday. 'B.M.' once more made its appearance in the calendar, accompanied as ever by the firm line announcing the exclusive, all-embracing nature of the rendezvous.

He asked no questions, carefully said nothing to indicate his suspicions . .. and followed her in a rented car, wearing dark glasses and with a hat pulled low over his brow.

Balthazar's Motel was at the upper end of the scale of those establishments advertising X-rated movies and waterbeds. The word 'Adult' winked knowingly in pink neon outside the manager's office.

From his vantage point in the parking lot of the 7-11 across the way, he saw that she had no need of management's assistance in securing a room. She had her own key in her purse and went directly to the door of, he discerned through his binoculars, cabin number nine.

It was, as he had feared, as unlikely a location for a meeting of the steering committee for the War Museum Charity Ball as for a showing of even the most immodest collection of fall fashions.

He waited, his heart palpitating and his breathing shallow, his camera with its long-range lens at the ready on the seat beside him.

Five minutes and forty-eight seconds later another car drew up and parked a few spaces away from Anne's. He recognised the shiny BMW at once. He clutched for a split second at the one last straw of hope: that Harold had lent his car to a colleague or a friend and knew nothing of the perfidious use to which it was being put.

But no. The driver was Harold himself. He got out, locked the vehicle, and went straight, eagerly even, to the door of number nine, and entered without knocking.

'Stop! No! For God's sake don't!' I was shouting at the top of my voice.
My
voice this time, no disguises. He knew who I was. He realised I was back. He knew what was going on. But he was beyond my control.

It was the thing I had most feared. I knew the danger point would come when he faced the truth about his wife, but I had felt confident I would be able to take over and steer him the way I wanted him to go. What I had not bargained for was Harold's appearance in the list of players.

Perhaps because I was myself as appalled by the discovery as Richard was, I let my grip slacken for a vital moment. The next thing I knew I felt like a novice rider whose horse has bolted under him. I was shocked by the force of the sheer blind fury that tore through him like a blood-red tidal wave, levelling everything in its path — including me. By the time I had gathered my wits and taken stock of the situation, he was out of the car and striding across the road with a heavy steel wrench in his fist.

'Don't do it! You'll only make it worse!'

'Shut the fuck up!' he bellowed. Pedestrians on the far side looked over anxiously at the ferocious-looking man coming towards them and apparently shouting at nobody. They moved a little faster to get out of his way.

'Richard, you know who I am! I'm your friend! Trust me!'

'Fuck you!'

A couple of passers-by broke into a run.

'Listen, this is the wrong way to handle it. You're going to lose! Do you want to be a loser?'

'I'll kill him! I'll kill them both!'

'Then what?'

'I don't give a fuck then what!'

'They'll lock you up in the mad house again! And this time it'll be for good!'

That got him. He stopped right there on the sidewalk, about twenty yards of which had by now entirely cleared.

'But you saw! You saw them!' he whined plaintively. To an onlooker he looked as though he was addressing some point on the ground a little way ahead of him. In reality he was looking at nothing. He was suddenly focusing all his attention on this inner voice, accepting its reality without question, fighting what it said but not the fact of its being there. I realised in that moment that I had accomplished what I needed to accomplish. We had a dialogue.

'Look,' I said, 'let's just get out of here before somebody calls the cops. You're behaving like a maniac. Look at that wrench you're waving around!'

He looked down at his hand as though it belonged to someone else, then he tossed the wrench on to the low wall that ran along the motel parking lot and sat down heavily next to it. I thought he was going to burst into tears, but he held them in. 'How could they?' he murmured. 'How could they?'

People were beginning to be curious now, their fear evaporating as they saw his rage subside. After all, he looked respectable enough, despite the dark glasses and the hat jammed oddly on his head. But they didn't get too close. The boldest gathered in a semi-circle at a safe distance, whispering among themselves about what they should do. The majority, as is usually the case, just gave him a wide berth and kept moving, anxious not to get involved.

My own main fear now was that the minor commotion he'd caused might have attracted the attention of Anne and Harold in their cabin just across the parking lot. I needn't 
have worried. Obviously they were too engrossed in whatever they were doing to pay attention to the world beyond their dusty cream venetian blinds. But I still had to get Richard away from there as fast as possible.

'Listen,' I said, 'this is your last chance to walk away from here. You stay, there are going to be cops, questions, probably you'll be arrested — which means your name on file! It's not smart. Now, haul ass!' That mention of his name on file triggered the response I needed. He passed his hands shakily over his face, got to his feet and, leaving the wrench where it lay, walked back across the street and disappeared into the parking lot of the 7-11. As we pulled out moments later in the rented car, a police patrol was arriving to check out the disturbance. The proprietor of a Chinese laundry had emerged from his shop and was pointing dramatically to the abandoned wrench on the wall and acting out a vigorous mime of Richard's eccentric comportment for the benefit of the officers. Nobody observed Richard, hat and glasses removed at my suggestion, driving off in the opposite direction.

'Ten more seconds,' I said, 'and you'd have been right in the middle of that. So just listen to me when I talk. That's all I ask. Just listen.'

'I think you'd better tell me,' he said with slow deliberation and a tremor of profound ontological fear in his voice, 'just what the fuck is going on.'

'First things first,' I said. 'There's no need to actually move your lips and use your voice when you want to talk to me. People will think you're talking to yourself, and we want to avoid attracting that kind of attention — right?'

'But what . . . what do I do?' His voice cracked as he asked the question.

'You just think. I'm in your head, I can read your thoughts. I'll know when you want to talk to me. I'll also know when you don't, and I won't bother you unless I have to.'

'You mean you know everything I'm thinking?' He was 
still talking aloud, staring straight ahead but driving on automatic pilot.

'Just about. Not everything exactly, because I can't be everywhere at once. The mind is a bigger place than its observer. And by "observer" I also mean the person to whom it belongs, not just an outsider like me.
You
don't know everything that's in your mind most of the time, do you? So how would you expect me to?' I thought it as well to emphasise this point so as to leave him at least some sense of privacy.

'This is so fucking weird.'

'Will you please try to say that without moving your lips? Just to please me?'

He tried. Very hard. The thought came over like a slowed-down tape recording with the volume turned way up. 'T-T-T-H-H-H-I-I-S-S-S I-I-S-S-S S-S-S-O-O-O-O F-F-F-U-U-C-K-I-I-N-N-G-G W-W-W-E-E-I-I-R-R-R-D-D !!!!'

'No need to try so hard. Just think like you normally think. I'll read you.'

He tried again. 'Is that better?'

'You're getting there.'

'Holy fucking Jesus, I don't believe this!'

'Listen,' I told him, 'you're not the only one who feels a little strange. Believe me, this isn't how I'd planned on spending my life either. To tell you the truth, I'm anxious to do something about it — and soon.'

'I need a drink,' he said.

'I don't think that's a good idea in your present frame of mind.'

'I don't give a fuck what you think!' he snapped back, pulling off the road and into the parking lot of a bar called 'The Bottom Line' that neither of us had been into before. 'Come on — I'll buy you one!' He thought the line but laughed out loud, a bitter, ugly laugh.

'Just be careful,' I said. 'You're angry, you're irrational, you're vulnerable. If you get drunk I can't help you. You're going to pick an argument or a fight just out of frustration, 
and you'll wind up getting the shit kicked out of you or worse.' I was really concerned about the way I could feel things going.

He pushed open the double door with a gunfighter's bravado and squinted to accustom his eyes to the gloom. The place was empty except for a sallow barman with greasy slicked-back hair and a body which seemed to fall in ever-looser folds from his forehead down.

'It's okay,' Richard said, 'there's nobody here anyway.'

'We tend to get a little busier between five and six,' said the barman, pushing aside the newspaper he'd been reading as though it were a heavy weight.

Richard realised that he'd spoken out loud again when he'd intended only to speak to me. It gave him a jolt. 'Give me a gin martini,' he said.

'Straight up, or on the rocks?'

'Straight up, with a twist.' He hauled himself on to a stool while the barman worked.

'It's okay,' he said to me, keeping the conversation properly internalised this time, 'I'm on top of it, I'm just going to have the one.' Then, as though to show both himself and me that he could handle the new-found complexity of his situation with perfect command, he said aloud to the barman: 'Have one yourself.'

'Thanks.' He dropped Richard's change into a jug on a shelf and pushed his martini across the bar top on a coaster. His professional sixth sense told him that this customer didn't want to talk, so he went back to his newspaper and left Richard to himself.

'If you can hold it down to one,' I said, trying not to nag, but feeling obliged none the less to press my case, 'that's fine. It'll help you relax and think straight. Two will screw you up. Believe me.'

Richard sipped his martini. It tasted good. He didn't answer me directly. His thoughts were moving too fast for me to follow them all. I wasn't even sure what direction he was taking through them. Eventually, however, he formed a 
clear sentence and aimed it in my direction. 'I thought you'd gone away, Rick. I thought I was cured.' There was a soulful, sad quality in the thought. I felt suddenly, unexpectedly, sorry for him.

'There was nothing to be cured of,' I told him as firmly as I could. 'You're as sane as the next man, and so am I.'

'I wouldn't like to have to persuade Roger Killanin of that.'

'You won't have to — not if you're sensible.'

'And what exactly does "sensible" mean in this context? Remembering not to mention to anybody that I'm nuts?'

'You're not nuts! Just get rid of that idea!'

'I'm talking to a voice in my head. That's nuts by anybody's definition!'

'Not necessarily. For one thing, I'm acting as a restraining influence on you right now. The voices that nuts hear tell them to kill people or blow up buildings. Have you ever heard of one saying he's got the Voice of Reason in his head, talking him out of doing something violent?'

He took the point grudgingly. 'I suppose you're right. I might have killed them both but for you.'

'And now you'd be sitting in jail watching the rest of your life go down the tubes.' I was pushing my advantage as hard as I could, trying to keep him under my control without provoking resentment.

'But you put me up to it,' he said suddenly, accusingly. 'You made me suspicious. It
was
you, wasn't it?'

'In a manner of speaking,' I admitted. I was anxious to play down this part of my role. 'I was the one who heard that phone call, not you. I guess I pointed you in a certain direction. Maybe I shouldn't have. If so, I'm sorry. But put yourself in my position. What would you have done?'

He thought this over. It was a reasonable point, and he was, despite all my reservations about him, a reasonable man. 'I guess I might have done the same. Anyway, that's history. The question is, what do we do now?'

'About them? In my view, nothing. Above all, nothing hasty. You know what I think? I think this affair is one of 
those things that happens between friends who get too close and . . . something gets out of hand. I think Anne loves you. I think Harold in his way loves you. I'm willing to bet they both feel guilty as hell about this whole thing.'

'And that makes it all right?'

'Of course not. But sometimes a thing like this just has to run its course. Give it a chance to blow over. Human beings can do irrational, crazy, sometimes cruel things. They hurt people they don't want to hurt. Sometimes it's the people who get hurt who have to show some understanding — and, above all, some discretion.'

'I don't know how you expect me to forget this whole thing. Or forgive.'

'I don't. I'm just saying give it time. Give yourself time. I guarantee, whatever you do in haste you will live to regret.'

He finished his drink and sat there for a while, his mind still in turmoil. The barman, fortunately, was too indifferent even to ask him if he wanted another. He would certainly have said yes, a double, and that would have been bad news.

'Please believe me,' I said, 'I'm trying to persuade you what's best for you.' Actually it was true. I had come to realise that in his way, which wasn't quite my way, but near enough so I could sympathise with him, he did love her. Her faithfulness mattered deeply. He thought of her as an ally and a soul mate, just as he thought of Harold as someone whose friendship defined the meaning of the word.

And now this. It was, I knew, as close to unbearable for him as it would have been in my world for me. 'Whatever has happened,' I went on, 'you can only make it worse by going berserk and tearing your life up by the roots.'

I didn't know what else to say. I could do no more for him. I tried to read his thoughts, but they were swamped in such a torrent of pain and confusion that it was impossible. So I let him be.

After a while he made an effort — in fact, I'm forced to say, an heroic effort — to pull himself together. He pushed 
away his empty glass and slid off his stool. 'I'll give it a try,' he said aloud, unthinking, and started for the exit.