Infidelity (7 page)

7

S
unday night. Installed, definitively, in Sarah's guest room at Vincent Square, my suitcase and sponge bag fully unpacked for the first time since my arrival in London in early December. Waiting, I suppose, to see what would happen.

At eight o'clock, the sound of a key in the lock drew me into the living room, where I had turned on one of the table lamps to announce my presence.

Sarah entered her vestibule looking flushed and distracted. She put her hat on a peg and began taking off her coat before she seemed to register that I was there, standing in the dim light. When she saw me, she paused as if she were momentarily unsure of who I was or how I came to be there. I could almost see her brain switching from one world to the other.

She let her coat drop to the floor, ran to me and flung her arms around my neck as if I were a long-lost comrade. It was not a romantic moment: there was a touch of desperation about it.

‘Tom. I'm so pleased you decided to come. Are you all right? Are you comfortable? Do you have everything you need? Did you find anything to eat?'

We stepped apart and I held her shoulders at arm's length. We looked intently into each other's face, perhaps searching for clues about the mental journeys we might each have been on during those two days apart.

‘It's such a relief to see you here,' Sarah said. ‘I was sure you'd decide not to come. Friday wasn't especially easy, was it?'

‘I gave myself a trial run on Saturday and, well, here I am. I won't outstay my welcome, I promise you.'

‘Tom, don't be silly. Let me pour us a drink. I always feel like an astronaut re-entering the earth's atmosphere when I get back here on Sunday.'

‘How was it?'

Sarah looked at me for a moment, then looked away. ‘I think we might have to work out a way of greeting each other on Sundays that doesn't involve that question. It will be the same answer every time.'

‘Sorry.'

‘No. I have nothing to hide. It's just that . . . I don't know what to say, really. I never know what to say. If I just say it was awful, that will
sound
awful. If I give you a medical report, that will sound heartless. If I describe my feelings about . . . Oh, Tom. I'm so glad you're here. I didn't dare hope. Coming home is so much easier when there's someone . . . Well, the truth is, this isn't home at all.
That's
home, and yet I feel like a stranger, an intruder, every time I go there.'

Sarah opened a bottle of wine and we sat in the same chairs we had occupied just four nights ago, after her three friends had sung their last note and slipped away.

I described my weekend, such as it was, but Sarah wasn't listening. She was distracted, less composed than I'd seen her previously.

Suddenly she exclaimed: ‘It's his anger, his resentment or whatever it is, that gets to me. Hostility. Palpable hostility.'

‘Not uncommon, Sarah. Not fair, but not uncommon. Sometimes, the sick can't quite forgive the well, you know.'

‘Say more about that.' Sarah leant forward intently, elbows on her knees. I felt a bit like a student being asked to elucidate.

‘Some sick people develop a kind of arrogance,' I said, treading carefully. ‘Perhaps that's not the word. Defiance, maybe? Assertiveness? A sense of entitlement? They demand all sorts of things from well people. Compensation, I suppose. Perhaps it starts when parents mollycoddle their sick children, almost as if they're being rewarded for being sick. Or perhaps it's simple envy of those who are well. Coveting their wellness.'

‘I hadn't fully thought that out before. It explains so much about Perry. Why else would he have decided to settle into a place he'd never really occupied before? Somewhere he never even wanted to be except for those fleeting weekend visits. There is something almost arrogant about it. Defiant. Yes, that is a good word.'

‘A bit in-your-face?'

‘Precisely. As if he thought I'd got away with it for long enough, though God knows what I was supposed to have got away with. I'd have said he was the one getting away with murder. Perhaps he just wants me to suffer because he is suffering.'

We sat in silence for several minutes before I noticed tears on her cheeks.

I moved to take her hand but she shook her head.

‘I'm all right, really, Tom. Well, obviously I'm not all right. But I mean, well . . . this is as much about you as Perry. It's just so lovely having someone – you – to talk to when I get back. It's always an unpleasant train trip on Sunday nights. Even the passengers annoy me. They seem rowdy, or something – not like the solid citizens on the Friday night train.'

‘This might be in the eye of the beholder, of course.'

‘Oh, I realise that. It's true. I'm always a bit raw by the time I start the return journey.'

‘What do you do down there?'

‘Do? I wish I knew. I read – the study is my refuge. Sometimes I try to do a bit of marking. I chat to Mrs Hepworth. We talk in murmurs, upstairs or in the garden, as if we're conspirators. She occasionally goes too far – I don't want to hear about Perry's carnal adventures with the night nurse, however passive.'

‘I thought he had motor neurone disease?'

‘Let's not go into the details, shall we? There's evidently no loss of sexual function – enough said. At least they desist when I'm in the house. Or I assume they do. Goodness knows what he's paying her. Plenty of danger money, I hope.'

‘But you can do some work there, by the sound of it.'

‘Serious work is impossible. This great anger Perry exudes . . . I'm on edge the whole time. I feel as if I'm on red alert, from the moment I arrive. Silly, isn't it?
My
house, and I feel like that.'

‘You don't strike me as the sort of person to be cowed by this.'

‘Cowed? Never. I go on the attack. Assert myself in all sorts of childish ways. I play my own music very loudly. Change the channel on his wretched TV sets. Or turn them off sometimes, when I can no longer bear it. I insist on making his Sunday lunch when he'd far rather have the day nurse do it for him. I even read to him, for God's sake, though he always closes his eyes so I can't tell if he's awake or asleep. There's rarely even a grunt of acknowledgement, let alone appreciation.'

I refilled our wine glasses and pondered those contradictions. She couldn't work there, but she did work there. She camped upstairs with only the housekeeper for company, but made Perry's lunch and read to him. She was intimidated but assertive.

‘Tom, I hardly know you. Yet I feel as if we've known each other for years. I find I really can say anything to you. You seem . . . what? Familiar sounds very tame. But your presence here tonight is a real comfort. No, more than a comfort. I feel secure, somehow. So thank you.'

We fell silent for a moment and Sarah consulted her watch.

‘And now to bed, I think. I need to ring Fox – she's always standing by on Sunday nights. I'll do that from the bedroom.'

We looked at each other.

‘So . . . Monday is my heaviest lecturing day. I'll be up and off before you need to surface. I have an early breakfast with a couple of colleagues at King's every Monday. Shall we have supper together tomorrow night?'

‘Let me cook something. Or would you rather eat out?'

‘No, here would be best. Can you cook?'

I shrugged. ‘Try me.'

‘I should be back about seven. Do you have any plans for tomorrow yourself?'

‘A long walk – I might even get to one of the Tates. I'll do the food shopping. I had a text message on Friday from a chap at Radio Four. Might mean something, might mean nothing. I'll call him.'

‘Well, goodnight.'

We stood and embraced. I kissed her once, lightly, on the lips and she pulled back, picked up her coat and disappeared into her bedroom.

I was still standing in her living room when her bedroom door opened and she re-emerged.

‘Here's something that might help you sleep – it's a rough first draft of my “Puss in Boots” piece. I'd be interested in what you make of it. On the train tonight, I fell to wondering whether Perry wasn't my Puss in some weird way, but there you go – too much interpretation can kill the mystery. There – I've stolen your very own words, I think. We academics can't help ourselves.'

As I prepared for bed in Sarah's spare room, hearing her moving about in her own room, nothing could have been further from my mind than the deep inner meanings of ‘Puss in Boots'.

8

‘O
h, bugger. This corner's usually fine for vox pops and other outdoorsy things. Didn't bank on the jackhammers. Sorry, Tom. Won't do at all. We need atmos, not bedlam. Let's walk on a bit. We'll find a more congenial spot up one of these laneways.'

I had called Johnny O'Dowd, a producer from Radio Four, in response to his text message. He wanted me to do an outdoor interview for a program he was putting together on the cultural significance of the motor car, part of a series called ‘The Meaning of Machines'. For this week, I was to provide some texture (his word) based on my columns about the psychology of car buying. We'd arranged to meet on a street corner near Charing Cross Station. I would know him, he'd said, by his height and his dirty yellow backpack. I arrived on time and Johnny bustled up five minutes later, sweating and apologetic. We talked as we walked in search of a better location, Johnny puffing.

‘Perfect timing, you getting in touch like that,' he wheezed. ‘Loved those pieces you sent me from
Zoom,
was it?'

‘
Vroom,
actually.'

‘That's the one. Good stuff, I thought. Racy. Your pieces, I mean. Haven't seen the mag in toto. The usual techno-porn, I imagine.'

I experienced a defensive pang, thinking of my former colleagues on
Vroom
who believed they were producing anything but techno-porn. Angus, the editor, was actually interested in good writing.

‘It was only a sideline. I'm a clinical psychologist by trade.'

‘Perfect. Cars-on-the-couch type of thing. Your editor was quite astute. Look, this won't take long. Ten minutes max. Most of the program's in the can but it's still lacking a bit of texture. Know what I mean?'

Without warning, Johnny ducked up a rather scruffy little side street, really no more than a lane. It was overshadowed by tall buildings that funnelled the wind and made this dull day seem even duller.

‘Here we are. Plenty of atmos but nothing too foreground. Know what I mean? The odd distant car-horn, the rumble of buses – that's good.'

Johnny looked to be in his late sixties, badly weathered and, as promised, well over six feet tall though stooped, with tufts of grey hair sticking out from under a navy beret as grotty as his backpack. It was a cold, windy afternoon and we were both wearing heavy coats and scarves. I briefly wondered why we couldn't have done this in a warm and comfortable studio, with background noises mixed later. Perhaps there were no studios available. Perhaps Johnny was a stickler for actuality. He'd been in radio all his working life, he was keen to tell me, dubious about digital, always saying no to promotions that would bring him in from the field. He made it sound like MI5.

‘The natural habitat, Tom. That's where I do my best work. Always have.' He fiddled with his recorder, microphone and headphones, testing and replaying to check for sound levels. ‘Ready to go, I think. Okay?'

I nodded.

‘I'll be editing myself out of this so try not to sound as if you're answering a question. No “That's right, Johnny” or “Good point” or any of that crud. Joe Listener won't have heard my question – try to remember that.'

We were huddled in the entrance to a residential building, just off The Strand. Johnny's lunch had evidently been laden with garlic, and I was reluctant to stand too close to him.

He looked skywards for a moment, as if for inspiration.

‘Interview with Tom Harper,' he murmured into his microphone, ‘re motivating factors.'

Another upward glance.

‘Bit closer, Tom. That's it. So, Tom Harper, when it comes to the motor car, if you had to isolate the one factor that dominates all others when a buyer is choosing a car, what would it be?'

‘It could never be that simple, or that rational. Oh, sorry. That's the answer to your question. Can we start again?'

‘No problem. Go ahead.'

‘There could never be just one factor in a decision as complicated and as emotional – to say nothing of expensive – as buying a car. Price is the great filter, of course, but once you're in the right price bracket, there's the reputation of the marque, fuel economy, comfort, ambience, power. It comes together into one synthesised impression – a kind of Gestalt, really. The interplay between those factors varies enormously from buyer to buyer – depends what you're looking for. An executive who's going to drive to work is in a totally different headspace from a young family looking for a people mover. Do you just want seating for a certain number of people, or do you have golf clubs to think of, or children's sports equipment? So it's not as simple as saying which factor dominates. Different factors dominate for different people in different circumstances.'

‘So, Tom Harper, when it comes to the motor car, if you had to isolate the
one
factor that dominates all others when a buyer is choosing a car, what would it be?'

‘Looking at this historically, as we are in this program, the buying process has changed enormously. Choice has proliferated, for a start, and the sense of a car being tied to its home economy has all but gone. National pride used to be a huge factor – buy British, and so on – and now it isn't. Not for most people, at least. Even if you think you might want to buy British, it may turn out you're actually buying German or Indian or Japanese. Ha, ha. Or you think you'll buy a solid German make and you find the one you're looking at was actually made in South Africa, or Mexico, or somewhere. Fiats from Poland – that type of thing. Could be China next. Muddies the waters considerably. And there's the fuel efficiency question, of course. Global warming is having an impact on the way we think about cars. The emergence of hybrids, of course, and the looming prospect of electrics. These turn out to be quite central for some people.'

Laying a palm across his forehead, Johnny turned off his machine.

‘Tom, I'm sorry
, but this isn't racy. This isn't crisp. I was hoping for something more along the lines of your written pieces. Pithy. Know what I mean? Keep it short. Just a simple answer. This is not the Reith Lectures, okay?'

He turned his machine back on, glanced upwards again, and said: ‘So, Tom Harper, when it comes to the motor car, if you had to isolate the one factor that dominates all others when a buyer is choosing a car, what would it be?'

I dried up completely.
One
factor? Had he heard nothing I'd said?

‘Sorry,' I said.

‘Let's try it another way. So, Tom Harper, if we have a person who's trying to decide between two, or even three cars that are in the same price range, similar performance, similar specifications, what do you think – I mean, as a psychologist who's studied these things – what do you think would be the crucial deciding factor?'

‘Given the price, the performance, the specifications being roughly equal between a number of competing options, I'd say, for most people in most circumstances, it would come down to styling. The shape of the thing. People do fall in love with their cars, you know, especially new cars, and the shape of the body is a major factor. A bit like human bodies, really. Some shapes are more appealing than others. More seductive. Research has shown that. Not just the body curves, but the configuration of a car's face – the grille, the size of the headlights and how far apart they are set – just like eyes in a human face. Smiling faces, serious faces . . . hard to quantify, though the boffins are determined to discover the perfect proportions for particular vehicle types, subject to fashion cycles, of course.'

‘Warmer, Tom. Warmer. I like that a lot. Just a little less development, perhaps. A touch less qualification – know what I mean? There's a good lad. No need to ruminate. Just the guts of it, if you will. Makes my job a bit easier when it comes to editing this down.'

‘How much do you think you'll actually need?'

‘Oh, one never knows that until one starts pulling the threads together. Bit like an audio weaver, really. But this is good. This is good. Just a bit tighter. Almost there.'

I was beginning to regret having agreed to this. It was bitterly cold in that windswept lane. Johnny's breath was becoming even more pungent as he became more agitated. Inexperienced as I was, it was clear to me that radio, especially in the open air, was very different from writing. This was not even an interview. We were a million miles from the thoughtful ‘radio talk' I'd had in mind when I made contact with Johnny's unit. I was catching a glimpse of how politicians must feel. Media fodder. Johnny wanted a grab, nothing more.

‘Okay?' Johnny attempted a smile, whether to instil confidence in himself or me was not clear. ‘Stay close in. There's a good lad.' A quick upward glance and we were off again.

‘So, Tom Harper, say we have a person, say a middle-aged executive on, say, eighty-five thousand pounds a year, divorced, say, but with a girlfriend, and he has to cart his kids around every second weekend, and he's trying to decide between two, or even three cars in the same price range, similar performance, similar specifications, what do you think – I mean, as a psychologist who's studied these things – what do you think would be the crucial deciding factor?'

‘It would be the one he falls in love with. And that would be more a matter of styling than anything else. The shape of the body. The curves, the headlights. The grille. The cues that say, “This is my kind of car. This is a car that says something about me I'd be pleased to have said. This is a car I could live with, happily ever after.”'

‘Oh, good, Tom. Very good. We're practically there. I could probably extract something usable from that but I'd like to capture some intact cadences, know what I mean? We might give it one more try, do you think? Bit tighter still, if you can. We're very nearly there. You're getting to the essence of it. No question. Very good. Close in, now.'

Another quick glance at the sky. There were rituals even here.

‘So, Tom Harper, when it comes to the motor car, if you had to isolate the one factor that dominates all others when a buyer is choosing a car – I mean, other things being equal – price, performance, specs – what would that one factor be? Just the one, please, Tom.'

I had become heartily sick of this. Why was I being so compliant? Why so
helpful
?
I was a long way from home. Who cared what I said? (Not me, for one.) I was as exasperated with Johnny as he was with me. I resorted to the comfort of a simple unrestrained judgement: he was a tedious, pretentious prat.

‘Lust,' I said, impatient to finish. ‘Pure lust. Rampant materialism meets sensory indulgence. Falling for the body, the curves, the hips, the rear end, the soft leather, the smell. Always the way with powerful aesthetics – feels like magic, but it's a purely physical thing, carefully calibrated by its creator.'

Johnny turned off his machine with a look of grim satisfaction. He smiled a dutiful smile. I stepped back out of garlic range.

‘We've got far, far more than we need, but there are some gems in there, Tom, no doubt about it. I'm very grateful.' He extended his hand. ‘Here's my card. This one will be going to air Sunday week. Eleven a.m. You can also catch it online, if you're going to be in church at that hour.' He chuckled, perhaps at the preposterousness of such a thought, and hailed a taxi, leaving me to fend for myself.

The occasional columns I had written for
Vroom
were a welcome distraction from my professional work – a diversion strongly disapproved of by my PA, Maddy. I had idly wondered whether my London ‘sabbatical' might be an opportunity to develop that material into something more serious. Courtesy of my encounter with Johnny O'Dowd, that prospect was already fading.