An Evil Streak

by An Evil Streak (retail) (epub)

  Another burst of angry tears.

  ‘I know,’ I said soothingly. ‘I know.’ I felt it would be fatal to touch her, much as I wanted to: it would break the cocoon of self-exposure she had put around herself. I waited a moment, not too long. ‘But when you do make love,’ I said, for this was important, ‘is it all right? As good as ever?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said dully; disloyalty would not stretch that far. ‘But it’s the same as ever. It’s like someone who plays Chopin terribly well but they always play the same piece in exactly the same way. And they never play Bach or Beethoven.’

  And David, I wondered. Would he be Brahms or Schoenberg?

  ‘So you see,’ she said, ‘it’s nothing to do with him.’ She still wouldn’t use his name. ‘It might be anyone. It’s between Chris and me. Only I’m vulnerable and you’re taking advantage.’ I felt the time had come for some emotive words. Pandarus, I reflected, had been quick to reassure Criseyde that he was not suggesting anything dishonourable: that would shame them both.

  ‘Gemma,’ I said, my voice very serious, ‘I promise you I’m not doing that. How could I? A harmless diversion, a little fun, that’s all. The other day, when you met, he made you laugh. I thought it would do you good to laugh more often.’

  She didn’t look at me. We both felt the weight of the lie.

  ‘After all,’ I went on quickly, ‘you’ve only seen him once. Aren’t we making a lot of fuss about nothing?’

  There was a long silence. She looked at me with what seemed like gratitude and terror. ‘D’you know,’ she said, ‘when I married Chris, dear Chris, I thought I’d be safe from you for ever.’

  10 November

  Told David she was on the brink. He said it was about bloody time and he was sick of waiting.

  12 November

  It appears he’s been telephoning her at home, on and off, just to keep her interest alive. He let it slip today. All this time, and she never mentioned it. Really, they are both behaving in a most underhand manner.

  13 November

  Asked what they talked about. He was evasive. Finally said, Oh, you know, stuff about what he’d like to do if he was alone with her and how he didn’t want to make love to his wife any more, and did she ever pretend Christopher was him? Stuff like that. Surely I knew the routine?

  I was fascinated. Gemma’s extremely keyed-up state suddenly makes sense.

  Later

  Went to bed early but couldn’t sleep. Deeply depressed that so many years since anyone made an even faintly pornographic telephone call to me. And the last time I made one, the person hung up.

  16 November

  Had completely forgotten my Leeds lecture next week till letter came today confirming trains, reception etc. A most unwelcome interruption. He pounced on it at once. ‘Arrange lunch with her that day,’ he said. ‘Make her come here. She’s refused to meet me in town.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, excited but uneasy. Now it will all happen behind my back. ‘She hasn’t told you to stop ringing her?’

  ‘No.’ He grinned. ‘She won’t do that. She wets her pants on the phone. I can say anything I like.’

  Somehow I didn’t like him talking about Gemma like that but I wanted him to go on.

  ‘Such as?’ I said.

  ‘Naughty. You’re peeping again.’

  19 November

  Will it happen? Will it actually happen? Will she take her clothes off for him in my flat? Will he have her at last – where? On the floor, on the sofa, in my bed? Will she betray Christopher here, cry out with pleasure here, beg for more here?

  Or will she simply run away when she arrives to find I’m in Leeds?

  20 November

  ‘Don’t forget to leave your keys,’ he says, casual and cocky.

  21 November

  Fog. What if I am prevented by fog?

  22 November

  ‘I may be a little late for lunch,’ she says on the telephone. ‘I want to do some shopping first.’

  23 November

  ‘Course,’ he says, ‘it’s all a load of rubbish telling her I don’t fancy Cathy. Well, I don’t, but Cathy wouldn’t notice if I never fucked her again.’

  (Distant bells rang. So why throw vases, etc.? Return to that later when my mind is clear.)

  ‘Still,’ he goes on, ‘it turns them on thinking another woman isn’t getting it. They all hate each other really, they’re all rivals, whatever they say. Later, it turns them on thinking another woman is getting it. But that’s later. After they think you belong to them. That’s when you get them corrupted. If you betray them then, they get terribly excited, they’ll do anything to get you back. But at this stage it’s all fidelity and saving it up till you get them hooked. I tell you something’ – and he looks at me, sure of my interest – ‘I’ll be relieved when we get started. All this suspense. I’m screwing Mrs Salmon into the ground, wearing myself out I am. She’s delighted, of course, but I’m bloody sick of it.’

  I make sympathetic noises. (Not quite the noble Troilus I might have selected but still, beggars can’t be choosers.)

  24 November

  Go through my lecture notes on the train, sorely distracted by images of Gemma in obscene attitudes all over my neatly typed pages. Journey passes swiftly.

  Deliver lecture in usual charming manner, wit and erudition nicely blended. (Well, I am all right when I have time to prepare it; it’s spontaneous wit and erudition that defeat me.) Warmly received, and some not too idiotic questions. Afterwards have great difficulty restraining myself from getting drunk with my hosts. Intoxicated by thought that while I discoursed on so-called Courtly Love, Gemma was (perhaps) abandoning the sacred to embrace the profane under my roof. Have trouble hearing everything my hosts say. If the rendezvous a success, all well and good: if, however, she runs away, she has every reason to be very angry with me for arranging trap. Have not considered this before: why not?

  Go to sleep after heavy meal and dream of Christopher. (Never before, as I recall.) We are walking about a minefield, he and I, looking for Gemma, who has suddenly become very small. I know she is somewhere else but I can’t tell him where because I am secretly hoping he will step on a mine. At the same time very much afraid I will instead. Sense of fear extremely vivid in dream. Also maddened by conflicting goals: destruction of Christopher, preservation of self. Why can’t he go on looking for Gemma in minefield and let me go safely home? For some iron reason not clear in dream, this cannot be.

  Wake in small hours. Never sleep well in a single bed. And I have indigestion. Take pill. Picture Gemma lying (how interestingly ambiguous the word lying is) beside Christopher in the dark, reliving adultery – or thanking God it never happened. Which? How long before I’ll know? Will he tell me tomorrow? Will he tell me the truth? And she?

  Take another, final pill, and sleep.

  25 November

  On way back reflect on unfairness of life. Pandarus not sent off on train just when his best efforts were coming to fruition. He was there, stage-managing everything. Instead, they have banished me. Man opposite me on train has extraordinarily obnoxious habit of interlocking fingers and cracking joints. Amazing how loud a noise this can be. I jump as if I’d been shot, each time, in an effort to deter him, but to no avail. He is innocent and insensitive. He does not appear to notice what he is doing and yet every time he does it an expression of pleasure and relaxation passes over his face, like a dog masturbating.

  Later

  It seems strange to be home. I’ve been all over the flat carefully, like a detective looking for fingerprints. There is nothing to indicate what, if anything, has occurred in my absence. I don’t feel I can relax till I know: the furniture holds a secret. For the first time I am uncomfortable in my own home. I stare at the telephone, but the obstinate beast will not oblige me by ringing. I examine the carpet for stains, I sniff the sheets. My home is not my own. They haven’t left a trace. Not a scent, not a mark, not a single erotic clue. I am excluded.

&nbs
p; Book 3

  ‘Pandarus had accomplished his intent’

  (1)

  ‘Dear David,

  When I woke up this morning there was a moment before I remembered, when I thought it was just another morning, and then I did remember and I got such a shock, I could feel myself blushing. Wasn’t that silly? I’m sure you’d have laughed at me if you’d seen.

  I wanted to reach out and touch you but of course there was only Chris. I felt embarrassed when I saw him so I turned over and pretended I was still asleep and thought about you waking up in bed with Cathy. I hope she didn’t notice anything different about you last night. When I got home I felt ever so shaky and very very odd – not like myself at all. I was afraid Chris would ask me what was the matter but luckily he was reading and he didn’t notice.

  You were absolutely right when you said we mustn’t let this affect our marriages. If we start feeling guilty it will spoil everything. But as long as we don’t hurt anyone there’s nothing to feel guilty about, is there? I always used to be afraid that having an affair would mean not loving Chris any more and falling in love with someone else, and what a ghastly mess that would be, with the children and everything. I didn’t see how it could possibly work. That’s partly why I didn’t do it – that and never meeting anyone really special. But of course it doesn’t have to mean all that, it can just be what you said yesterday, a sexual friendship. I’m glad you called it that, it sounded so nice and solid – made me feel I could write to you as well as go to bed with you.

  Take care.

  Gemma’

  Now I don’t want you to suppose that Gemma habitually posted her letters unsealed and neatly numbered for future reference, nor that this particular letter just happened to fall out of David’s pocket while he was cleaning the loo and I innocently chanced upon it. No, there’s a little more to it than that, I fear: not entirely to my credit but ultimately justifiable. David did not turn up for work; Gemma did not telephone. I placed the letter on the mantelpiece and went about my business. It was not an immediate decision. I began the day with every intention of passing the letter on to David undefiled. At least, I think I did. But each time I passed it Gemma’s writing reproached me, those careless squiggles of violet ink, which in anyone more sophisticated would be an affectation. Don’t you care? it seemed to say. Don’t you even want to know what I’ve written? A eulogy? A rebuke? A farewell?

  I boiled a kettle for fresh coffee and the kitchen filled with steam. David might lie to me about the contents of the letter. Gemma might be too proud to confide in me if she needed help.

  I have always been good with my hands. The secret is not to hurry or it will tear. To wait and to be gentle, judging the moment. If I did not read the letter, the symmetry of my design would be incomplete, my creation unfinished. And I was consumed by prurient curiosity. I squirmed with delicious guilt in the steamy kitchen, but my hands were steady. And afterwards, a mere moment with the photo-copying machine, a lucky purchase years before, because I always disliked carbon, it somehow contrives to soil my fingertips and lurk under my nails. I numbered the copy at once because I knew there would be more now she had begun and I like to be orderly, especially in emotional matters.

  Making the letter whole again was trickier but I persevered, having no alternative, taking my time. I likened myself to a Japanese surgeon repairing a ravished maidenhead. I was probably even more careful than necessary, in my usual perfectionist way. People do not generally examine the backs of letters very closely, as far as I can tell. They do not expect them to be tampered with, any more than they expect to find their nearest and dearest has committed murder. It is too radical a crime to be perpetrated by somebody one knows intimately. And yet the majority of murders take place in the home, so we are told.

  The letter itself was such a bonus. Unoriginal in content and undistinguished in style, it nevertheless represented a degree of intimacy I could not achieve any other way. Because it was not intended for me, it showed me a side of Gemma I had never seen, that no amount of conversation could have revealed because she would have known she was talking to me. It was as if I had watched through the keyhole while she undressed. An unlooked-for gift. I had not thought of her writing letters. I had imagined inhibition, prudence, idleness – all would prevent her. Did I perhaps not know her after all? I had imagined a greater degree of guilt, too; guilt there certainly was, if only in her denial of guilt, but I had expected more. I had not anticipated this lightness, this positive enjoyment. But I was responsible for it. She lay in my hand, exposed.

  * * *

  ‘I ought to be very cross with you,’ she said when she finally rang.

  ‘I can’t imagine why,’ I said primly. ‘It was an accident of fate. Didn’t he tell you? I was called away unexpectedly and it was too late to let you know. You’d already left.’

  She actually laughed. ‘I wonder why you’re so bad at telling lies,’ she said, ‘when you get so much practice.’

  Sex with David seemed to have sharpened her wits. ‘We’re going to be very sensible,’ she said, ‘and not let it affect anything. He still loves his wife and of course I love Chris.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So it’s not a love affair, it’s a—’ She hesitated and I wondered if she would actually use his words. But evidently they were too private, for she went on, ‘just an adventure.’

  I wondered if she knew yet that was not what she wanted.

  ‘It will do you good,’ I suggested.

  ‘And my marriage,’ she said quickly. ‘I won’t be so tiresome and Chris will be happier with me.’

  ‘And you with him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a long pause: I almost wondered if she had gone away to fetch something. Sometimes she did disappear without warning if one of the children suddenly needed her.

  She said, ‘Was David pleased with my letter?’

  I smiled. ‘He hasn’t got it yet. He took the day off.’

  ‘Oh.’ A world of disappointment in her voice.

  ‘You must have worn him out,’ I said.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t make jokes like that, you’re going to spoil everything.’ She sounded quite cross.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know it was sacred.’

  ‘It’s not… it’s just… oh, I hate not having any privacy.’

  I said, ‘I shall make myself as unobtrusive as possible.’

  ‘I know you will.’ As always, she softened instantly, one of her most endearing qualities. ‘So my letter’s still there.’

  ‘Sitting on my mantelpiece. It’s quite safe.’

  * * *

  When he had finished reading the letter he looked smug and put it in his pocket with the casual air of a man who was accustomed to such tributes.

  ‘The fish is hooked,’ he said.

  I thought this remark in poor taste but ignored it and asked instead why she had written. I was interested to see how far he would lie if I gave him the opportunity.

  ‘It’s another way of touching me,’ he said.

  I was impressed: I had not credited him with so much perception.

  ‘She’s so lovely,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. (I could see very little work would be done today.) ‘She really is. She deserves someone nicer.’

  ‘She already has someone nicer,’ I said. ‘That’s the whole point.’

  He smiled. ‘It’s like seducing a child,’ he said. ‘She’s soft and gentle, ignorant and curious.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  ‘I was in a play about it once.’ He shrugged, looked away, evasive. I wondered how much of his life was rooted in unreality. ‘That was a line from the play, if you really want to know.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like a very good play,’ I said critically.

  ‘It was all right. At least I was working.’

  I said, ‘She rang up.’

  ‘Yes. She would.’

  ‘To talk to me,’ I said.
‘Not to you.’

  ‘Same thing. You’re a link. I bet she talked about me.’

  ‘You’re very confident,’ I said, ‘aren’t you?’

  ‘You set it up,’ he said. ‘You’ve only yourself to blame.’

  I did not like the associations of the word ‘blame’.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Anything that happens. It’s out of your control now.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, believe me. There’s nothing you can do but watch. But that’s all right. You enjoy that, don’t you?’

  He had my measure. I watched him uncomfortably, annoyed that he was looking more than ever attractive, as if Gemma had rubbed off on him.

  ‘You’d like me to tell you all about her,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘In the Middle Ages,’ I said, ‘lovers had to be discreet.’

  ‘So the next time we want to meet here, you’ll discreetly go out?’

  (2)

  ‘Dear David,

  I feel such a beginner. I don’t care what you say, I simply don’t believe you haven’t done this lots of times before. You know all about it and what to do and say. I don’t just mean making love – although I’m sure you’ve had much more experience than me – I mean the whole thing of how to behave – how to conduct this sort of affair. I don’t think you can possibly remember what it’s like to be new to it all. Like changing schools and you don’t know the rules or the slang – or going on holiday and suddenly everyone’s talking a foreign language and driving on the wrong side of the road.