Infidelity (28 page)

37

T
uesday – silence.

Wednesday – a message on my voicemail from Fox, telling me only that a letter from Sarah was in the post.

Thursday – this, handwritten, addressed to me at the office:

Littleton

Sunday 23 May

T –

I'm sorry about my silence. I can imagine how wretched you must be feeling, but I'm simply unable to face a conversation yet. We will talk soon – of course we will.

The procedure was not difficult – everything was exactly as Fox had said it would be. Undignified and unpleasant, but perfectly straightforward and professional.

We used to say a child would change everything. But perhaps we didn't realise that this might change everything, too. I don't regret doing it. I certainly do regret the angst it has caused us, and the disappointment I could see in your eyes for that whole final week. The one thing I never wanted to do – disappoint you.

I've been thinking about that student who did such a quirky analysis of ‘Humpty Dumpty' for my tutorial. The egg a symbol of fertility – the pregnancy. The wall a barrier between two lovers – Perry. The egg falling off that wall – the termination. The broken heart that couldn't be repaired. I think that boy was prophetic.

This feels like a dark mystery – I can remember that we were together, but I can't remember why, or how it came about. Isn't that strange? It's as if a light has gone out in my soul. I can't explain it any better than that. I seem to have lost the capacity for feeling whatever it was I once felt about you. I don't feel anything much, except grief for our poor, broken relationship. I am truly sorry.

Some practical things – term ends next week, so I won't be coming up to London for a while. Please stay on at Vincent Square for as long as you like. I'll let Fox know when I feel able to speak to you. Please don't call me. (I know Mother would appreciate another visit.)

S

I reached immediately for the phone.

‘Fox? Tom. The letter has arrived.'

‘Hi Tom. How does it read?'

‘Well, for a start, it's not a letter I could take seriously, except as a symptom. Sarah is obviously not thinking straight.'

‘I said she was withdrawn. Melancholic, even.'

‘That's an understatement. She's jumping to all kinds of wild conclusions – she's not seeing things clearly at all. Even the writing looks a bit . . . well, unstable. I'd like you to look at it.'

‘I think I'd feel uncomfortable reading it.'

‘I mean, there's a brief statement here about the procedure. That's fair enough. But then she goes off into Humpty Dumpty-land and all sorts of stuff about how she's grieving for our relationship. As if it's over. I mean, where did that come from? After all that, she ends with some chirpy admin.'

‘I know she's upset, Tom, but I really don't think she's lost it completely. You need to read whatever she's written quite carefully. Think about it. This is Sar we're talking about – she would have weighed every word. Try to imagine what she's going through. Don't make any hasty judgements.'

‘She wrote this letter last Sunday, Fox. Last Sunday. Goodness knows what she's thinking by now. That was four days ago.'

‘That does surprise me. I wouldn't have said she was up to writing anything when I left on Sunday evening. She sounded brighter this morning when I called.'

‘I need to talk to her. I need to see her – urgently. This can't go on. It's ridiculous. It's been almost a week.'

‘Tom, you're the psychologist, aren't you? You know she's suffering. I think you're being a bit tough on her. You say you love her. A week is nothing. Can't you do the one thing she's asking you to do? Give her a bit of space? A bit of time to get over this . . . whatever it is?'

(Space? Whenever my clients had talked about needing space, they were usually bidding for a terminal escape from a partner, but lacked the courage to say so.)

‘I'll call you later,' I said, and kept the phone to my ear long after the click of our disconnection.

I called Elizabeth and arranged to meet her for lunch the following week. She was aware that Sarah was staying out of town but didn't mention the reason and neither did I.

I locked the door of my tiny office, read Sarah's letter again, and swivelled my chair to gaze out the window at the persistent drizzle.

I could feel myself swinging between misery and panic. My frustration was tinged with terrible anger, like a wild grief. I had endured the tortured denouement of a failed marriage, the humilia­tion of a professional misconduct charge and the realisation that my career trajectory had wobbled out of control. I had faced off the demons that tried to invade the space where my faith had once been. All that had been painful enough; challenging enough. This was of a different order.

Sarah had captured my heart, my head, my very soul. I knew my surrender in such circumstances was absurd. I knew there was a kind of madness in it. Yet she had given me a new way of making sense of myself. It felt like a personal breakthrough.

And now this, whatever ‘this' was going to turn out to be. Losing my only serious bid at fatherhood was devastating enough; to lose Sarah would be unendurable.

I wanted to lash out and hit someone or something, or everyone and everything, but where would I land the first blow? This was no one's fault. All this pain and no one to blame: that perfectly reasonable thought only deepened my gloom and sharpened my fury.

38

I
was still sitting there an hour later, with nothing done and nothing much needing to be done, when my phone rang.

‘Tom? Kenneth.' Jelly in work mode. ‘I need to see you.'

‘Now?'

‘Now would do nicely. Come to my office. I'll ask Rodney to rustle up some lunch.'

I had seen Jelly the previous day at our weekly briefing in Jennifer's office. I'd left them a copy of my draft report. Jelly was going to be discussing it with Jennifer, and we had spoken of the possibility of making an announcement to the staff as early as the following week.

Rodney greeted me warmly, asked if I want onion on my lox bagel, and showed me straight into Jelly's office. Although I had been here once before, I was struck again by how cramped and messy it was. Squeezed behind that desk, Jelly's girth looked larger than ever.

‘A few things have come up, Tom. Throw everything off that chair and take the weight off your feet.'

Jelly looked intently at me – checking, perhaps, to see how red-rimmed my eyes were, since I assumed Fox had been in touch with him since she spoke to me. I was learning the ways of the First Wednesdays.

‘You okay?'

‘I couldn't say that, Jelly. No. I'm not okay. But I'm glad to have some work to do.'

‘Bad business. We might come to that later. Don't linger too long with the pain, what? Not healthy. Anyway . . .'

He shuffled some papers, located my draft report, and held it aloft.

‘This is brilliant, Tom. No other fucking word for it. I'm very impressed. For a fucking Australian, you're good, aren't you?'

I smiled uncertainly. Unstinting praise wasn't Jelly's normal style and I wondered where this might be leading.

‘Jennifer still has to get back to me, but I'm sold. This is the fucking blueprint, as far as I'm concerned. Wouldn't change a word. Frankly, I'm amazed at what you've dug up from these people. You have the knack of getting people to unburden themselves, what?'

I shrugged. ‘It's what psychologists do. I've been encouraging people to spill their personal beans for years. Different focus here, of course. But people were keen to talk – it's everyone's dream to help design their own jobs. And they knew this was a genuine consultation – that helped. I gave them the broad outline, but they had plenty of leeway. This isn't by any means the same model I started out with.'

‘Like every other fucking sceptic, I suppose, I wondered in the beginning if this was going to be the usual steaming pile of horse shit. But, no. The genuine article. So . . . well done. Well fucking done.'

Jelly's persistent use of ‘fucking' intrigued me. It intruded itself into our conversations the way other people might say ‘um' – the sort of thing my linguist mate in Melbourne called a non-lexical modifier. For Jelly it was not really a word. It was certainly not an obscenity – not even a symptom of latent anger or frustration, as far as I could tell. It was just a mindless habit, a verbal tic, with no more significance than his equally recurrent ‘what?'. Yet somehow he managed to delete the ‘fuckings' when he was talking to Jennifer or Rodney, at least when I was present. He even dropped it when he was talking to me about matters as serious to him as money, so there was some kind of self-censorship operating.

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘I'm pleased you're pleased. I've enjoyed every minute of it myself. The consultations, the strategy stuff, fine-tuning the new structure. I'm looking forward to helping Jennifer put it into practice. We're going to need some specialised help to revamp the IT, though. That's still to be resolved.' Rodney knocked and delivered our bagels in a brown paper bag, with coffee in takeaway cups wedged into a cardboard tray.

‘Any chance of a couple of plates, young Rodney? Visitors and all that.'

Rodney scurried away and returned with two floral gilt-edged plates that looked as if they might have come from the china cabinet of Jelly's maiden aunt, if he had one.

‘I intend to give you some fucking advice,' Jelly said, as soon as the door had closed and Rodney was out of earshot. ‘Gratuitously.'

‘About the implementation?'

‘About Sar. Do you mind?'

‘Depends what it is.'

‘Trust me, Tom. I know Sar better than you do. I'm talking from history.'

‘Go on.'

‘If you put any pressure on Sar, she'll run a mile. Ring her up, write to her, try to see her . . . no way. When her shutters go up, you're out of the game. I'm not saying permanently. Never say never. I'm just saying there's no role for you right now. This is all about her.'

‘Jelly, I –'

‘I'm serious, Tom. Never more fucking serious in my life. There is nothing you can do. Sar is dealing with whatever she's dealing with. On her own. Period. How she operates. Always has.'

‘But I'm not sure if you understand –'

‘I wouldn't be giving you this fucking advice if I didn't fucking understand. I know you've committed yourself totally to Sar – Perry and all. And I know she was sold on you. Totally, what? Might still be, for all any of us knows. Nothing you can do or say will budge Sar a jot or tittle in any direction. Know what I'm saying? Out of your hands, Tom. I know whereof I speak.'

‘You know about the pregnancy. The termin–'

‘Don't mince words, Tom. The abortion. Opposed to that, I can tell you. With you one hundred percent on that. Everything's always so fucking complicated. But not the abortion. That wasn't. Not to my mind. She told you about the last one, I take it?'

‘The last one?'

‘Spot of ancient history. Her previous pregnancy.'

I felt as if I had been hit in the back of the head with a bag of cement. Even though I was safely seated, I could feel myself crumple, as if I might actually topple off the chair. I gripped the edge of Jelly's desk and looked at him for some sign that I had misheard. There was no such sign.

‘Surprised it didn't come up,' Jelly said. ‘Still, if you never asked her, she wouldn't have felt the need to tell you. Did you?'

‘Did I what?'

‘Ask her?'

‘It never even crossed my mind. She seemed so ambivalent about the prospect of having a child, I never imagined she might have been pregnant before.'

‘Sar's policy – ask me and I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Don't ask, I won't lay stuff on you.'

‘Yes, she did tell me that. Almost those words.'

‘This is twenty years ago I'm talking about. A fucking lifetime ago. Different times. Sar was a very different woman. Bit wilder. Well, a lot wilder. Reckless. Even more than now.'

‘Did she have a baby? Is that what you're telling me?'

‘Not exactly. No, that time we were all urging her to have an abortion. Including me. Different story this time, the way I see it – different situation, different context. Back then, we all felt it was dead wrong for her to have the baby unless she was going to have it adopted out, which she said she wouldn't do. The father was well out of her life by the time she realised she was pregnant and she was too proud, or too angry . . . I don't know. Too something. Too uninterested, maybe. She'd dropped the chap cold well before she knew she was pregnant.'

‘So what happened?'

‘She became totally attached to that baby. To the idea of it. So we all got involved, as you do. It was like a fucking group project, working out how she was going to manage. We were all going to be surrogate something-or-others – aunties and uncles, I suppose. Her bulge became the centre of attention at our First Wednesdays – E even wrote a ditty for it, what? Near the end, we had to take turns to feel it move.'

‘Near the end?' I was saying this through the hands covering my face.

‘At about six months, she miscarried. Lost it. Huge fucking drama, as you can imagine, Tom. Touch and go, really. We nearly lost Sar as well as the baby. Took her months to get over it.'

‘Months?'

‘Major trauma. She was totally devastated. Declared she would never get pregnant again as long as she lived.'

‘I see.'

‘Part of the appeal of Perry, I always thought – never a hint of Perry wanting children.'

There was nothing I could say. There was nothing more Jelly needed to say. We sat there in silence, sipping our cold coffee.

Eventually, I voiced the obvious thought: ‘She was frightened of it happening again.'

‘Fox's territory, Tom, not mine. I'd say anxious, though. Definitely anxious. And why not?'

‘But that wasn't the main factor. Perry was, surely. Feeling she couldn't let Perry know what had happened.'

‘Way out of my depth, Tom, that side of it. I just wanted to give you some advice, and I've given it. Let her be. Go with the flow. Yes – I do happen to think Perry was possibly the main factor, but I'd say not the only factor. Definitely not. I have no doubt being married to him meant something – means something – to her that you and I mightn't fully understand. Man was – is – appalling on so many levels. But the high Anglican view of marriage thing runs very deep in Sar, whatever she might say. I don't think she's ever really believed in divorce. Or abortion, come to that.'

‘Well, I never suggested divorce to her, so we never actually discussed what she thought about it.'

‘Let's not pursue that one, shall we?'

‘Is there anything else you need to tell me, Jelly? Anything else I need to hear?' I felt as if I had heard more than enough for one day, but I needed to have it all out, whatever ‘it' might be. I didn't think I could face the prospect of any more exciting instalments.

‘I've said what I wanted to say. More than you wanted to hear, I realise. Believe me, Tom, I have some inkling of how you must be hurting – like hell, I'd imagine. And you're puzzled – of course you are. Sometimes the switch does go off, though. Chap I know, married for thirty years, walking down the street one day hand in hand with his wife and she suddenly shoves his hand away. Can't bear to have him touch her, what? Never again from that moment on. He tells me he can show me the precise fucking spot where it happened. It does happen.'

‘I know it happens, Jelly. I've had nearly twenty years as a clinical psychologist, remember. Knowing it happens to other people never helps, though, does it? Nothing helps. A week ago, Sarah and I were declaring our future would soon arrive. I believed it. Now . . . well . . . who knows? But thank you, Jelly. I know you mean well. Your advice, I mean. It's good advice. I can't control her reactions to all this. I can't control anything.'

‘Precisely. If it really is beyond your control – and, believe me, it is – you can only await developments. Take it as it comes – there's great wisdom in that idea. I'm as hopeful as you are. I thought – still think – you're a wonderful couple. No question. A great future, I thought. But in the end, it doesn't matter what any of us think. I say again – this is all about her. You might have been blinded to the truth of that – hormones have a way of blinding us, what?
All
about her. Literally.'

Rodney tapped on the door. ‘More coffee? Fruit?'

‘I'm going to have an apple, Tom. You want one?'

‘Thanks,' I said, though I couldn't have been less interested in eating.

‘I have another agenda item, actually. There's another Blair thing I need to run past you.'

Jelly looked out the window of his office onto a blank wall on the other side of a lane.

‘I don't think it's raining. Why don't we take our apples and walk for a bit?'

We walked into the lane, paused to admire the elegance of a jeweller's shop window and turned into Oxford Street, abuzz with the lunchtime crowd.

‘Back to your brilliant fucking strategy, Tom. It's going to turn the place around – I have no doubt of that.'

‘But not in a hurry, Jelly. This is a reorganisation, not an injection. Don't expect a miracle. Things have been allowed to slip a fair way.'

‘My point precisely. No reflection on Jennifer, and she's keen to get the new structure up and running. Keen as mustard. She knows this is make-or-break time. Not her fault the market has gone soft on us, what?'

We negotiated a crowded intersection and just caught the lights. Jelly was a surprisingly nimble walker, weaving through the crush.

‘My old dad used to have a saying. If things are going quiet, open another shop. Betting shops, it was. He ended up with quite a string of them before he sold out. His theory was a new shop energised the business. It certainly energised him. And perhaps he was right – if things are softening in one area, for whatever reason, push into a more promising area to keep your growth curve pointing in the right direction.'

‘I gather you've done that rather well. You have three separate businesses?'

‘Four. Different structures. Different marketing methods – yes. But we're all sucking our living out of the London trough, essentially. Oh, we're regional, too – not Blair, but one of the others. Big in Nottingham. Norwich. Just launched in Durham. But all UK, you see.'

Another set of traffic lights halted our progress.

‘Down here, Tom. We'll go around the block and start heading back. No, I'm thinking in a quite different direction. I'm thinking Australia.'

‘Australia? Really?' (No, Jelly, I pleaded inside my head. No! I was not in the mood to be offered a new job, especially not one located ten thousand miles from Sarah.)

‘End of June, I'm going to haul myself out there. Sydney and Melbourne. Size it up. Suss it out. I have some good contacts but I'll need a local pair of eyes and ears to help me. Never been there before, believe it or not. Never felt the need. But things are going to get rockier here and rosier there – that's what my advisers tell me. You'd probably agree with that.'