How to Be Good

by Nick Hornby

  ‘The affair’s over. As of this second.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. But I do know that no one asks Elvis Presley to play for nothing.’

  I feel sick and panicky, and now I don’t understand his words or his tone.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s what Colonel Tom Parker told the White House.’

  ‘Please talk to me properly.’

  ‘Nixon’s people phoned up Colonel Tom Parker and asked him to play for the President at the White House. And Parker said, you know, “Fine, but how much will we be getting?” And Nixon’s aide said, “Colonel Parker, nobody asks for money for a private performance for the President”, and Parker said, “I don’t know about that, but no one asks Elvis Presley to play for nothing.” ’

  ‘I don’t understand! Please stop this! It’s important!’

  ‘I know. It’s just . . . you know, I was reminded of that story, so I thought I’d pass it on. It’s my way of saying that what you do or what you want doesn’t really count for anything. You’re the president, I’m the King. I’m in charge, you’re on your bike. Off you go. Thank you and goodbye.’

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  I say this even though I know that he almost certainly does. He’s that sort of man. Maybe when it comes down to it, this is the only way in which men in our particular postal district are unreconstructed. They know about changing nappies and talking about feelings and women working and all the basics, but he would still rather close things off right now than admit any possibility of doubt or confusion or hurt, however much it costs him, however much he is eaten up by what I have done. And he told me once, and I’m sure it will come up . . .

  ‘Why don’t you think I mean it? Don’t you remember? We talked about it?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘So.’

  We were in bed, and we’d just made love – we had Tom but not Molly, and I wasn’t pregnant, so this must have been some time in 1992 – and I asked David if the prospect of having sex with me and no one else but me for the rest of his life depressed him. And he was uncharacteristically reflective about it: he said that it did get him down sometimes, but the alternatives were too horrible to contemplate, and anyway he knew that he would never be able to tolerate anything other than monogamy in me, so he could hardly expect indulgence for himself. So of course we ended up playing the game that all lovers play at some time or another, and I asked him whether there were any circumstances in which he would forgive me an infidelity – a drunken one-night stand, say, followed the morning after by immediate and piercing remorse. He pointed out that I never got drunk, and I’d never had a one-night stand in my life, so it was hard to imagine this particular circumstance; he said that if I were unfaithful, it would be for other reasons, and those other reasons he felt would spell trouble – trouble he wouldn’t want to think about. I very rarely credit David with any perspicacity, but I take my hat off to him now: I wasn’t drunk. It wasn’t a one-night stand. I have been sleeping with Stephen for all sorts of other reasons, every one of which spells trouble.

  ‘Have you thought about where you’re going to stay?’ he asks – still apparently untroubled by any of this.

  ‘No, of course not. Are you telling me I’m the one that has to go?’

  David just looks at me, and it’s a look that is so full of contempt I want to run away from everything – my husband, my home, my children – and never come back.

  I’m a good person. In most ways. But I’m beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn’t count for anything very much, if you’re a bad person in one way. Because most people are good people, aren’t they? Most people want to help others, and if their work doesn’t allow them to help others then they do it however they can – by manning the phones at the Samaritans once a month, or going on sponsored walks, or filling in standing orders. It’s no good me telling you that I’m a doctor, because I’m only a doctor during weekdays. I’ve been sleeping with someone other than my husband outside working hours – I’m not so bad that I’d do it inside working hours – and at the moment, being a doctor can’t make up for that, however many rectal boils I look at.

  4

  David tells me he’s going away for a couple of nights. He doesn’t say where, and he won’t leave a number – he takes my mobile with him in case of family emergencies – but I presume he’s gone to stay with his friend Mike (divorcee, local, good job, nice flat, spare bedroom). Before he leaves, he tells me that I’ve got forty-eight hours to talk to the kids; the unspoken assumption is that when I have told them how naughty I’ve been, I will pack my bags and go. That first night I don’t sleep at all, and I feel that I’ll never be able to rest until I’ve answered every single one of the questions that thrash around in my head like fish in a trawler net. Most of these questions (will David let me come round to watch the dinosaur programme on Monday nights?) choke and die; a couple of them, the bigger, more tenacious ones, just refuse to let go. Here’s one: what rights do I have? You see, I don’t want a divorce. OK, I know I did, before, when I didn’t know what it meant and I didn’t know what I felt and I didn’t know how awful the prospect would seem – but now I don’t, and I’m (almost) positive I’d do (almost) anything to get my marriage back on track. And if that is the case, why should I be the one who tells the kids? If he won’t contemplate any pacific alternative, why should I do his dirty work? What if I just don’t go? What would he do then? I go round and round on this other loop, too: we’re never going to get out of this mess, things have gone too far, it’s always going to be awful whenever it happens, best get out now . . . And all the time I know, somewhere in me, that I will never be able to sit down and tell my children that I’m leaving them.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Molly asks next morning. It’s always Molly who asks that question, especially since David’s Wisdom of Solomon judgement the other day; Tom no longer seems interested.

  ‘He’s away on business,’ I say, as if David were another person altogether. It’s an answer born out of a lack of sleep, because it could never apply to David’s life and work. For the last few years the children have listened to him grumbling about having to go down to the newsagent’s to use the photocopier; how, then, has he suddenly become the kind of man who stays in hotels in the major capitals of Europe eating power breakfasts?

  ‘He hasn’t got any business,’ says Tom matter-of-factly.

  ‘Yes he has,’ says Molly, sweetly and loyally.

  ‘What is it then?’ Tom may prefer his mother to his father at the moment, but his inability to resist cruelty when the opportunity presents itself does not, I would argue, come from me.

  ‘Why are you always horrible to Daddy?’

  ‘Why is it horrible asking what business he does?’

  ‘Because you know he doesn’t do any and you’re rubbing it in.’

  Tom looks at me and shakes his head.

  ‘You’re rubbish at arguing, Molly.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you just said he doesn’t do any. That’s what I said, and you told me I was being horrible.’

  Molly stops, thinks for a moment, tells Tom that she hates him and wanders off to get ready for school. Poor David! Even his staunchest defender cannot actually convince herself that he does anything resembling a proper Daddy job. If I were any kind of right-thinking parent I’d get involved, explain that fathers do all sorts of different things, but I hate David so much at the moment that I can’t be bothered.

  ‘So where is he really?’ Tom asks me.

  ‘He’s gone to stay with a friend.’

  ‘Because you’re getting divorced?’

  ‘We’re not getting divorced.’

  ‘So why has he gone to stay with a friend?’

  ‘You’ve been to stay with friends. Doesn’t mean you’re getting divorced.’

  ‘I’m not married. And when I go to stay with a friend I tell you I’m going and I say goodbye.’

 
‘Is that what’s bothering you? He didn’t tell you he was going?’

  ‘I don’t care whether he says goodbye or not. But I know something’s wrong.’

  ‘Daddy and I had an argument.’

  ‘See. You’re getting a divorce.’

  It would be so easy to say something now. Not easy as in comfortable, but easy as in logical, natural, appropriate, right, no jerky changing of gear: Tom knows that something is up, I may well have to say something at sometime anyway, David may well tell them himself as soon as he comes home . . .

  ‘Tom! How many more times! And when are you going to get ready for school?’

  He gives me a long stare and then turns violently on his heels to convey anger without disobedience. I want to go to the surgery and work and work. I want the day to be as unpleasant and as demanding as any working day has ever been, just so that at the end of it I will have regained something of myself. I want to look at blocked rectums and oozing warts and all sorts of things that would make the rest of the world sick to its collective stomach, and hope that by so doing I will feel like a good person again. A bad mother, maybe, and a terrible wife, undoubtedly, but a good person.

  On the way to work I have a sudden panic that Stephen will call the mobile, so I call him as soon as I get in and he wants to know what’s happening and I don’t want to talk about it and he asks to see me and I end up arranging to meet him and booking a babysitter.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Tom asks when I’m getting ready to go out.

  ‘To meet a friend for a drink.’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘No one you know.’

  ‘Your boyfriend?’

  Molly thinks this is one of the funniest lines she has ever heard, but Tom isn’t joking. He wants me to answer the question.

  ‘What are you talking about, Tom?’

  Tom is beginning to give me the creeps. I feel that any moment now he will be able to tell me Stephen’s name and describe what he looks like.

  ‘What’s this friend’s name, then?’

  ‘Stephen.’

  ‘What’s his wife’s name?’

  ‘He hasn’t got a . . .’ Tricked by a ten-year-old. ‘He hasn’t got a wife. His girlfriend’s name is Victoria.’ His girlfriend’s name is Victoria because there is a photograph of Victoria Adams and David Beckham on the front of a magazine lying on the kitchen table; if Tom had asked me this morning, when I wasn’t feeling very sharp, I would have told him that Stephen’s girlfriend’s name was Posh.

  ‘Is she going?’

  ‘I hope so. She’s nice.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll marry her?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Tom. I’ll ask him tonight, if you want.’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Fine.’

  There is almost no point in talking about the rest of the evening, such is its dismal predictability. Stephen flatters me, I feel desired and stimulated, I see, as if for the first time, how unhappy my relationship with David makes me, and I go home wanting out. Oh and when I get home David is there waiting, and everything changes again.

  I’m frightened when I see him sitting there, and initially the fear consoles me, because it surely means that my marriage is brutal, and that therefore the Archbishop of Canterbury will approve my divorce. But on further reflection I can see that brutality is a less likely explanation for my fear than other factors: the existence of Stephen, say, or my failure to talk to the kids about what has been going on, and I can feel the Archbishop’s approval vanish as quickly as it appeared.

  ‘Did you have a nice evening?’ David asks me. He says it quietly, and I take the quiet as menace.

  ‘Yes. Thank you. I went . . . I was out . . .’ For some reason I’m trying to remember the name of Stephen’s girlfriend until I remember she was a whole other lie told to someone else for different reasons.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘Listen. I haven’t loved you enough.’

  I gape at him.

  ‘I haven’t loved you enough, and I’m really sorry. I do love you, and I haven’t communicated that properly or positively.’

  ‘No. Well. Thank you.’

  ‘And I’m sorry that I said I wanted a divorce. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And will you come to the theatre with me tomorrow night? I’ve booked tickets for the Tom Stoppard. I know you wanted to go.’

  The theatre has provided David with more rant material than probably anything else in his ranting career, with the possible exception of the Germans. He hates the theatre. He hates the playwrights, he hates the plays, he hates the actors, he hates the critics, he hates the audience, he hates the programmes, he hates the little tubs of ice-cream they sell in the intervals. He once tried to write a column explaining why he hated safety curtains, but he couldn’t quite find the requisite 800 words.

  ‘Oh. Thank you.’

  ‘I’d like us to go to bed and sleep in separate rooms, and wake up in the morning and try to start again from scratch. Rebuild our lives.’

  ‘Right-o.’ He probably thinks I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. A daft, cheerful phrase like ‘Right-o’ seems, at that precise moment, the only appropriate response to David’s blithe, bland suggestion, ignoring as it does all the complication and bitterness of the last few years of our lives together.

  ‘Good. I’m going to bed, then. Good night.’ He comes over and kisses me on the cheek, hugs me, and starts to walk upstairs.

  ‘Which bedroom are you sleeping in?’ I ask him.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I don’t mind. Which would you prefer?’

  ‘Shall I sleep in the spare room?’ I don’t mind either, and anyway, it seems churlish to ask this polite, accommodating man, whoever he is, to move out of his own bed.

  ‘Is that what you want?’ But he says this solicitously – he’s double-checking, rather than drawing attention to his hurt at my desertion of him.

  I shrug. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK. If you’re sure. Sleep well.’

  When I wake up I’m almost sure that I will be greeted with a snarl and an insult, possibly followed by a request to vacate the house by the evening, but he makes me tea and toast, pours the kids their cereal, tells me to have a nice day. After work I go straight home, we eat an early supper, and go out to the theatre. He asks about the surgery, even laughs at a story I tell him about a guy with a chest infection who had no idea that smoking really was bad for one’s health. (I can’t make David laugh. Nobody can make David laugh, apart from the people he is prepared to concede are funnier than him, namely, Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Tony Hancock and Peter Cook, 1960s model. Making people laugh is his job.) We go by Tube to the theatre, and he continues in this vein: he’s friendly, curious, he listens, he asks questions, he buys me one of the much-despised tubs of ice-cream. (True, he buys it for me out of my money – it transpires that he has forgotten his wallet – but the point is not that he is being generous, but that he is choosing to overlook one of London theatre’s myriad crimes.) I’m starting to feel giddy; I’m also starting to get confused about who I’m with. This is what Stephen’s like, this is why I was seduced into the idea of Stephen in the first place, and I’m worried that the contrast between my lover and my husband is becoming blurred. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is the most vicious and manipulative thing David has done yet: pretending to be a nice person so that . . . what? So that I’ll be nice back? So that I’ll want to stay married to him? Is that really so vicious and manipulative, trying to make one’s marriage function properly? In most cases one would argue not, but my mistrust of David runs very deep.

  *

  I love every second of the play. I drink it, like someone with dehydration might drink a glass of iced water. I love being made to think about something else other than my work and my marriage, and I love its wit and its seriousness, and I vow for the millionth time to nourish myself in this way on a more regular basis, while knowing that I will wake up in
the morning with my unread novel on top of me. I spend almost as much time trying to snatch glimpses of David’s profile as I do watching the stage, though. Something weird has happened, definitely, because the struggle to enjoy the evening is written on David’s face: a war is taking place there, around the eyes and the lips and the forehead. The old David wants to frown and scowl and make faces to indicate his contempt for everything; the new one is clearly trying to learn how to enjoy himself in a place of entertainment, watching a new and brilliant piece of work from one of the world’s leading playwrights. Sometimes this attempt at self-education takes the form of simple imitation – when he remembers, he allows himself to laugh when the audience laughs, although he never quite times it right, and as a consequence he reminds me of Tom and Molly attempting to join in on songs when they were little – and sometimes he makes an attempt to self-start, as if a nod of the head here and a gentle smile there will stimulate his withered capacity for benign, as opposed to malicious, pleasure. And sometimes he forgets himself, and the odd line provokes a fleeting expression of rage and bile. (Such is my intimate acquaintance with David’s bile that I can tell what kind of line will do this to him: it’s the kind that flatters the intellectual pretensions of the audience, makes them feel that unless they laugh they’ll be demonstrating their own ignorance. I don’t like it much either, but it doesn’t make me want to get a gun and kill people.) Even then, however, it’s as if an invisible pair of hands grabs his face and twists it back into shape, smooths it out, makes David resemble somebody who’s paid a reasonable amount of money to have a good time and is therefore determined to do so. It’s so unlike him that it gives me the creeps.

  *

  We walk out into the cold as if we were simply another pair of contented theatregoers, and I can’t resist asking.