A Certain Chemistry (36 page)

I didn’t feel like going out, but there wasn’t much to do where I was. I spent some time in the hotel bar, smoking and drinking whisky (whisky is the drink in these situations, aesthetically; you can’t picture Marlowe or Spade having dame trouble and sitting at the bar with a glass of Belgian lager or a dry sherry, can you?). There’s only so long you can hang around in a hotel bar drinking on your own, though, without straying into lonely saddo territory. So, I got out before that set in, and went up to my room, where I drank from the minibar and sat on the edge of my bed watching the telly instead.

Hugh stared at me like an unflattering photograph of himself, a still image caught forever in the instant between complete disbelief and utter horror.

I hadn’t been looking forward to telling him, but I’d judged it’d be best to get it over with. For one thing, it was possibly appropriate that he know about the situation quickly for professional reasons, what with M&C handling George’s book. For another, Sara might very well talk to Mary about it soon, so he could easily hear of it that way: I preferred to tell him myself before this happened. It seemed the decent thing to do, but I was also keen that the first he heard of it wasn’t some distorted version of events—passed on from Sara, through his wife—that would reflect poorly on me. I was worried, in fact, that he might have heard already, before I’d come to his office this morning. His current facial expression very much indicated that this was not the case.

However, someone who
had
been on the receiving end of some information, in my estimation, was Fiona. When I’d walked into the office, Fiona had been going somewhere carrying a bundle of manuscripts. She’d glanced up, seen me, gone bloodless, then dropped her head and scurried—yes,
scurried
—away. It was attractive to imagine that her own awareness of her mistake coupled with nothing more than my stern gaze had been sufficient to provoke this reaction, but I doubted it. I guessed that she’d had a call from Paul on Saturday morning, pointing out how it would look if news of George’s other-woman status were to get out when her book was singing a sisterhood hymn—and how poorly it would serve Fiona’s reputation when it got around that
she
was the one who’d revealed the secret, while
she was actually in charge of the publicity for the book
. I’m sure Paul would have made it very clear that, in those circumstances, her publishing career was likely to shift gear pretty quickly from head of publicity at McAllister & Campbell’s Scottish offices to unpacking the boxes at a discount bookstore in Rhyl. (Despite George’s assurances, I couldn’t get the idea that he’d additionally threatened to have her thrown into a car compactor in Deptford out of my mind either.)

Hugh was still frozen with that expression on his face.

“Oh,” he said, finally.

“Yes. It’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.”

“So . . . have . . . how long have you and Georgina Nye been . . .”

“Just two or three weeks, really. Though”—I shrugged—“. . . you know.”

“No, not really,” said Hugh, “I haven’t got a clue. . . . Dear me—poor Sara.”

“Yes . . . yes . . . but ‘poor me’ too, obviously.”

“You?”

I was a bit hurt by this. “Yes—me,” I said. “I’m the one who’s sitting on his own in a hotel room, drinking tiny—
obscenely
expensive—bottles of Drambuie and watching reruns of
Mr.
bloody
Ed
. Sara’s kicked
me
out, not the other way round.”

“But, well, Tom . . . it is, you know, your fault.”

“Oh,
right
. It’s always the man’s fault, isn’t it? Have you ever noticed that? Whenever someone’s unfaithful, it’s
always
the man’s fault. If he strays, then he’s some thoughtless, selfish bastard who’s so shallow that he’ll risk everything because he can’t resist the chance of a quick shag. But if the
woman
is unfaithful, then that’ll be because she felt ‘unloved’ or ‘ignored’ or ‘undervalued,’ and it’s the man’s fault again. A man has an affair and it’s a drooling, dumb, dick-over-brains thing or a pathetic midlife crisis, but a woman has one and it just shows how bloody complex she is—how she knew ‘the relationship wasn’t working,’ even though it seemed to be working perfectly to her poor, bovine other half. But that’s not her being selfish, never satisfied, and twisting the truth of the situation, oh no.
She
can decide that about the relationship as a whole completely unilaterally, and that just means she’s
sensitive.
If he doesn’t see it that way, well, that’s actual proof he’s brutish and self-obsessed. Amazing, isn’t it, how—whoever does what—it’s
always
the man’s fault?”

“Tom?
You’ve been sleeping with Georgina Nye
.”

“Oh, for Christ’s . . . I’m talking culturally, Hugh—
culturally
. Do you have to be so bloody literal about things?”

“Well . . .”

“And, anyway, suppose we say for a second that this
is
about me . . .”

“Um . . .”

“You love Mary, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“And your sex life is still good?”

“Mary’s very interested in gardening nowadays.”

“Eh? What’s that supposed to mean? Is gardening the antidote to sex or something?”

“Personally or culturally? Because—”

“Whatever, whatever. It doesn’t matter. You’re not sexually unsatisfied with Mary, though, are you?”

“Tom . . .” Hugh wriggled, as though he were embarrassed.

“
Are
you?”

“No, Tom—I’m not.”

“Good. So, you love her and your sex life is fine . . . but that doesn’t mean you’re not a human being anymore: that you don’t have exactly the same emotions as any other human being. You still fancy other women.”

“No I don’t.”

“Of course you do.”

“I don’t.”

“You
do
. . . What about Cameron Diaz?”

“That’s hardly the same thing, Tom.”

“Why not?” I sat back in my chair, challenging him to give a convincing explanation.

“Because I might look at Cameron Diaz and think she’s attractive, but that’s a very different thing to
sleeping with
Cameron Diaz. I think Nicole Kidman is attractive too. . . . And Tori Amos. Courteney Cox, Angelina Jolie, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Liz Hurley, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sheryl Crow, Katie Jameson—”

“Katie Jameson?”

Hugh leaned over and pointed out of his window, across the McAllister & Campbell office. “Katie Jameson,” he said. “In Legal and Copyright . . . Sandra Bullock, Nigella Lawson, Natalie Imbruglia, Jenny Agutter, Kirsty Wark, my daughter’s geography teacher, the woman who’s on the cheese-and-cooked-meats counter at the supermarket, Mary’s sister-in-law in Kinlochewe . . .”

“Okay, okay.”

“But the point is I’ve never done anything about it. I’ve never actually slept with
a single one of them
.”

“But you would if you had the chance.”

“No. I wouldn’t.”

“You bloody
would
.”

“No, I
wouldn’t
. Because Mary would find out and leave me.”

“Ahhh—but suppose you knew Mary would never find out.”

“It’s impossible to know that.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Well if, in a hypothetical context, I knew she’d never find out, then maybe, in a hypothetical context, I’d sleep with one of them. But then, in a hypothetical context, I’m sleeping with one of them hypothetically now, just so I can consider your question.”

“There you go, then—you’re sleeping with Cameron Diaz.”

“No, because—nonhypothetically—I’d never, ever do it. Mary would find out and leave me.”

“But that doesn’t alter the fact that you
want
to, right? Whether you do it—whether the action or the intent is the crucial thing—is Sartre versus Kant, isn’t it?
At the very least,
you have to admit it’s a central dilemma of moral philosophy that it’d be awfully glib of you to say you’ve categorically solved this morning, Hugh.”

“Mmm . . .”

“
Wouldn’t
it?”

“Well, I suppose . . .”

“So”—I leaned forward and began jabbing my finger down on Hugh’s desk for emphasis—“here I am, genuinely emotionally engaged with two women—through a random act of chance that meant I met both of them. In moral terms it’s perfectly arguable that I’m no more culpable than any other sexually mature human being on the planet, and yet I’m stranded in a society where infidelity is, axiomatically,
always
judged to be the man’s fault on some level or other. Christ! Talk about loaded dice. Even
you
aren’t on my side! What have I done that’s so wrong?”

“Um . . .”

“Tell me—what have I done?!”

“Erm . . .”

“I’m a fucking idiot, aren’t I?”

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

I slumped back in my chair, suddenly very tired, and said, hardly louder than a whisper, “Yes . . . yes, please.”

I called George a few times during the day, but her mobile was switched off. I left messages asking her to phone me back. I was upset and . . . I was upset, and frightened, and I wanted to talk to her; she would listen and be able to sympathize. She, more than anyone, knew how much I loved Sara, and so she would be able to understand how hard this whole thing had hit me. Then something interesting happened. At about nine o’clock in the evening George sent me a text message that said, “i need some time to think about things.”

The interesting aspect of this was that I knew she had lots of free text messages included in her mobile contract. Dumping me via text wasn’t even costing her the 8
¹
⁄
_²
p it would have cost me to dump her that way. This seemed brutally unfair. Nauseous and shaking, I did—somehow—manage to convince myself I’d misinterpreted her words. Doing this in the face of such evidence took an impressive effort of will, as you can imagine. I don’t like to brag, but suffice it to say that I’ve
certainly
been dumped by enough women to recognize a dumping as roaringly explicit as “I need some time to think about things.” I texted her back. “are you saying its over?”

A little later, she replied, “i didnt say that. i just need some time to think about things.”

So, that was it, then: she’d definitely dumped me.

I sent her multiple further messages, but got no reply. I tried to ring but got diverted to her voice mail. This was an astonishingly cruel thing to happen to me. On the very day I’d come to realize that my relationship with Sara might be in serious jeopardy (obviously, I’d known before this morning that the situation was serious, but I hadn’t quite understood how it was so, erm . . .
serious
. You know, “really serious”), on this very day George had also deserted me. I couldn’t understand it.

Yes—self-evidently—George was ambitious and would be terrified of anything that might damage her image, but I simply couldn’t accept that she’d drop me so quickly and so coldly when things got rough. She wasn’t that mercenary and unfeeling. I’d had sex with her—so I knew what she was really like. Pretty quickly I realized that it must be her agent who was making her do it. I couldn’t delude myself; I had to face the facts now. George was probably sitting in some hotel—her eyes raw from crying, her voice hoarse from sobbing, nervous shivers running through her hunched, emotionally drained frame—clutching her mobile phone and staring inconsolably at the message Paul had insisted she send to me. And there was no hope of my competing, of course—George was completely under his control. He’d guided her for so long that he’d now become a father figure she couldn’t defy, and there was no doubt that his calculating outlook would mean he’d want to protect his investment in her. What could I do about it? Nothing. For all I knew, Paul had even confiscated her mobile phone by now and any messages I sent would go to him instead. Moreover, George was George, so I couldn’t simply contact her the way one would a normal person. In fact, if I tried to get in touch with any real determination, then Paul would probably report me to the police as a stalker. Most of all, if he’d broken George psychologically—made her give in, deny our love, and do his bidding—then she was already lost to me.

There was only one thing for me to do now. I needed to get very, very drunk and then phone Sara.

First of all, I got very, very drunk. The initial phase of this took about an hour. To avoid the sadistically inflated prices charged for drinks from the minibar, I went downstairs and put in the groundwork there. I hurled an eclectic selection of spirits and beers into myself, which was all the more effective as they landed on a virtually empty stomach (not completely empty as, forty-five minutes and a significant number of drinks into the exercise, I was absolutely overcome with hunger for three bags of dry-roasted peanuts—something which, by amazing good fortune, they sold at the bar). I then took a little stroll around the inside of my brain to inspect my condition and reported back to myself that I wasn’t “drunk,” as such, but “relaxed and perhaps a little light-headed.” Still, I felt, I’d done enough to move back upstairs now. Some other guests were in the lift, but I was so cleverly slow, measured, and precise both in my demeanor and in the way I took my time pressing the correct button for my floor that I doubt they suspected for one moment that I’d been drinking. A deception I successfully maintained, as the lift doors shut (removing me from their view) after I got out and it thus didn’t matter that I walked along to my room by bouncing from one side of the corridor to the other.

I opened my door and made straight for the minibar. I knew I’d made more alcoholic headway than I’d first imagined when my progress across the room began with my drifting off to the left through a conveniently open doorway and falling magnificently into the bath. I lay in it for a few minutes, and giggled uncontrollably at something I forget now, before pulling myself out again (knocking a spare toilet roll into the lavatory in the process—ahhh . . . I’ll get that out in the morning; I don’t think I’ll need to use the lavatory at all tonight) and heading back to the bedroom. I opened the minibar and was surprised and delighted to find that, now I looked again, the drinks didn’t seem all that expensive after all.