An Evil Streak

by An Evil Streak (retail) (epub)

  I don’t even know if you like my letters. When I was engaged to Chris I used to write to him and he wrote back. It was only after we were married he told me he thought it had been silly writing letters when we lived in the same village.

  But I don’t think that’s the point of letters – you don’t have to be miles apart – it’s the thing of being able to talk to someone whenever you feel like it, and you can’t always pick up the phone. Half the time I don’t even know where you are and I have to wait for you to ring me. I think I wait much better if I can write letters.

  Chris still hasn’t noticed anything. I’m very glad but isn’t it odd? Because I think I’m so different. I don’t want him to notice but I feel he ought to. When someone you’ve lived with for years doesn’t notice such a big change it makes you wonder what else they can’t see.

  Lucky for us, anyway.

  Gemma’

  She was begging him not to be like Chris, ever, in any detail. And disappointed at the same time that Chris was not instantly transformed by her adultery. (Wasn’t it magic after all?) I invited myself to tea for the novel pleasure of observing the complacent cuckold at close quarters. He greeted me absently; he was deeply engrossed in some volume detailing the latest refinements in rubber, plastic and chemical devices for circumventing the tedious consequences of human fertility. I wondered which method he and Gemma favoured. The tedious consequences of their own fertility, the socially acceptable pair, played at our feet. They were not nearly as attractive as Gemma had been at their age: they had inherited too much of their father – a tribute more to Gemma’s fidelity than her good taste. But it could have been worse: they might have resembled Beatrice.

  I had not seen Gemma since the affair began, David having banished me before she arrived for their second tryst. Seeing me might make her self-conscious, he said, and the second time was always tricky, neither novel nor established. I went out reluctantly, yet with relief: I was not sure I felt ready to face them both together. The happy couple I had created. I walked a little, but it was a dispiriting winter’s day so I went to the cinema and watched an indifferent film. When I got home they had gone but they had been more careless and relaxed: towels ruffled and the bedspread creased, a couple of windows conspicuously open to destroy the scent of love. I was rewarded for my co-operation. They had given me a little more of themselves.

  Now I searched Gemma’s face for signs of change – sensuality, anxiety, fatigue – but she looked exactly the same. She was excessively nice to her husband, though; I thought he must be a fool not to notice something was wrong. I studied him with satisfaction: it was my doing that his wife was unfaithful and he did not know. He was an ancient figure of fun. So much for his boasting that he and she had a perfect understanding. So much for his attempts to exclude and humiliate me. I was sweetly revenged.

  Gemma cornered me in the kitchen. ‘Oh, it is good to see you,’ she said, kissing me with sudden fervour on the cheek, adding swiftly, ‘I do hate weekends now.’

  I saw what she meant: no hope of a telephone call, no chance to write letters.

  She said, ‘When can we come to the flat again?’

  ‘Whenever you like.’

  ‘We weren’t sure.’ The pronoun gave her obvious pleasure. ‘It seems awful asking you to go out. And of course I mustn’t come up to town too often or it will look funny.’

  The intoxication of deceit made her tremble slightly. She looked very beautiful and I wanted to kiss her.

  Later on Beatrice arrived, admired the children and pretended to be pleased to see me. We all ate an uneasy tea together.

  ‘Gemma looks well,’ said Beatrice, puzzled. Like a dog, she picked up the scent; I had not bargained for that. But she lacked the skill to interpret.

  Gemma avoided my eyes.

  ‘It does me good getting up to town more often,’ she said.

  ‘I hope you’ll do the Christmas shopping while you’re there,’ Christopher remarked. ‘Less than three weeks to go now.’

  We all received this startling information with the silence it deserved.

  ‘Of course I will,’ Gemma said eventually. ‘That’s the whole point.’

  ‘If I knew when Gemma’s going to town,’ Beatrice said, aggrieved, ‘I could ask for a lift.’

  I noted that for the second time she had not addressed her daughter directly but commented upon her to the rest of us, as if she were a household pet.

  ‘But you like to plan ahead,’ said Gemma. ‘And I usually go at short notice. On impulse.’

  ‘Or when I invite her,’ I added helpfully. ‘I’m very impulsive.’

  Beatrice said, ‘I haven’t seen you, Alex, for a long time.’

  ‘No, I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Still on Troilus and Criseyde?’ Christopher asked. He always remembered. I was pleased and yet I resented his courtesy. He was only polite because he thought he had won. He discounted me.

  ‘Yes.’ I amused myself picturing the horns on his forehead.

  Beatrice said irritably, ‘Aren’t you ever going to get to the end of it?’

  ‘It’s a very long poem.’

  The children whined to get down from the table.

  ‘Perhaps Gemma could help me with it later,’ I said, glimpsing a plan. ‘Do some typing. Take dictation now and then.’

  Christopher said, ‘Gemma? You might enjoy that. You’re always saying you don’t have enough to do.’

  Beatrice said, ‘Can’t you use a dictaphone?’

  I said, ‘I hate machines.’

  Gemma said, ‘I might come. If you ask me nicely.’

  (3)

  ‘Dear David,

  Such an awful weekend. Friends of Chris to dinner on Friday and they stayed late and drank a lot and I had such a headache. My own fault, I suppose, for drinking brandy, but I had to do something to stay awake. Then Chris felt sexy after they’d gone – the first time since you and I began – I was amazed, usually it’s me running after him, especially late at night. So I had to be nice to him. I felt very odd. I tried to analyse it so I could tell you. I was sort of excited but reluctant as well. And I felt a bit of a scarlet woman. He also seemed much more of a stranger. Does any of that make sense? Anyway it was all right eventually. It took longer than usual because he’d had so much wine, and I kept thinking of you and then wondering if I ought to. I don’t mean pretending he was you or anything like that, I couldn’t do that, but just remembering and wondering if anything I’ve learned might show up – would he think I was different? I know you said it ought to help and make it more exciting and in a way it did, I suppose. Anyway it’s over and that’s a relief because I’ve been dreading it as a sort of test. Silly, I know.

  Then on Saturday we had a children’s party because Jonathan and Stephanie have been to so many. I used to hope just two a year, for birthdays, would be enough but it wasn’t so now we have one midway between, plus Christmas. It really is a lot. I’m not sure who it’s for really – them or Chris’s patients so they’ll all think how lovely he is. Anyway what seemed like hundreds of children turned up (I think it was fifteen really) and made the most incredible noise all afternoon playing games, and ate and drank like pigs, and then some of them were sick before we could get them to the loo and others kept crying and one in particular – a real little Hitler – bashed another one quite badly and I had to explain to his mother why he was going home covered in sticking plaster when he’d arrived perfectly fit. She didn’t take it too well and I can’t say I blame her, poor woman. Chris thinks the Hitler child is disturbed and maybe he is, I don’t really care, I’d just like to stop him bashing other kids – and thank God it wasn’t one of mine he bashed or I’d have had to explain to his mother why I’d murdered him. By the time they all left I was so exhausted I had to have three gins before I could even think of putting my two to bed and getting supper. (Chris was out on a call.)

  I’m so glad you have children too. I don’t think I’d dare write all this – or even say it
– to someone who hadn’t. And it means we really understand each other’s point of view in other ways too. About marriage and everything.

  Sunday was better, thank God, because Uncle Alex came and actually dropped hints in front of Chris about me going to work for him in London. Just think – we could meet more often – it would be a perfect alibi. Wasn’t it sweet of him? Chris seemed to think it was a good idea too! (I was very casual about it.) But it spoilt it a bit that Mummy was there – I couldn’t really relax and enjoy myself. She was in an awfully strange mood and kept giving me funny looks. She can’t possibly suspect anything, that would be ridiculous, but she was sort of watchful and grumpy. Of course she and Uncle Alex have never really got on, it could be just that. I wonder if you’ll ever meet her. I bet you could charm her. She loves Chris of course because she thinks he’s so suitable for me, and she’s a bit of a snob so she adores him being a doctor. It’s funny. You would represent everything she dislikes – but I’m sure you’d get round her somehow.

  It amazes me to think of Cathy not wanting you any more when I want you so much.

  See you soon.

  Gemma’

  He said furiously, ‘Another time just you keep your nose out of my affairs.’

  I was surprised. From my own point of view I had found the letter wanting in sensuality and heavy with domesticity, but I could not see why it should enrage him. And he certainly could not know that I had read it: I had resealed it with particular care. A work of art, no less.

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ I said mildly, impressed by my own forbearance. The soft answer that is alleged to turn away wrath. I had learnt from my mistakes with Christopher that it does not pay to lose control of a situation by losing one’s temper, although the appearance of doing so can of course be useful at times. This thought immediately led me to wonder if David, as an actor, was in fact acting now. The rage seemed disproportionate.

  ‘She says you’ve offered her a job here. So we can meet more often. You must be out of your fucking mind.’

  I said, ‘I thought you’d be pleased. She’s very keen.’

  ‘I know that, for Christ’s sake. But she won’t be if you set it up so she sees me every bloody day.’

  I said, ‘You’re very modest.’

  ‘Jesus, don’t you know anything? What’s all that reading done for you, what about the course of true love and all that not running smooth? God almighty, you’re trying to make it so fucking smooth we’ll skid right off the end.’

  I was amused and impressed. I have always been generously inclined to encourage the talented few.

  ‘That’s a very vivid turn of phrase,’ I said approvingly. (It was more: it was accurate.)

  ‘Don’t give me any of that academic shit. It’s my life I’m talking about. It’s me who’s having Gemma, not you – much as you’d like to – and it’s my decision how often I have her.’

  ‘In my flat,’ I said.

  Suddenly he sagged, like a puppet, Petrouchka, the sawdust draining out of him.

  ‘There are other places we could meet,’ he said, with childish bravado. ‘I’ve got plenty of friends.’

  ‘Of course.’ In fact I could not imagine him having any, given his neurotic and moody disposition. ‘But isn’t it safer and easier and more comfortable for you to meet here?’ There was a cold silence, while we surveyed each other. We were, of course, discussing supremacy rather than convenience or erotic tactics. Who, in vulgar parlance, was to call the shots. We were carving up Gemma between us as if she were Poland at the Congress ofVienna in 1815. Presently he agreed that it was safer and easier and more comfortable for them to meet here, but I felt there was something suspect about the way he said it. He seemed so relieved to be able to agree with me, I began to believe then (as I still do) that there was something in him that corresponded to something in me, that we were equally corrupt, a matched pair, and that it satisfied this something in him to use my flat as much as it satisfied this something in me to have it used. He did not want to meet Gemma anywhere else and he was grateful to me for making it possible for him to go on meeting her here, for practical reasons, without loss of face, without admitting the truth. Meeting elsewhere, in the home of one of his hypothetical friends, would have evaporated some essential spice, the scent of evil, the aroma of corruption – whatever you like to call it. The affair would have become antiseptic, bland. It needed to be acted out in the same environment where it had been generated, under my aegis.

  None of that could be said: we picked it out of the silence. Looking at him as we waited, dark and sulky, chewing his fingernails, fidgeting, glancing out of the window, lighting one cigarette from another, I thought that despite his distressingly offensive personal habits, which I tried in vain to overlook, he and I were in fact very much alike. Devious planners, both of us. Scheming and plotting in the heavy silence. Otherwise he would never have acquiesced to my dream so readily. He was on my wavelength. We were related.

  ‘The point is,’ he said, breaking the long silence and papering the cracks very obviously, ‘she’s got to want to see me more often than she can see me, otherwise it won’t work.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘These early stages are very delicate,’ he went on, like an artist or a market gardener. ‘You’ve got to get the balance exactly right. Later on it doesn’t matter so much.’

  ‘You mentioned true love,’ I said avidly.

  ‘A figure of speech.’

  ‘But surely that’s what she really needs.’ It was certainly what I myself needed her to have. I was bored with the limitations and inadequacies of sexual friendship and adventure. Was that all I had exerted myself for? Where, to put it crudely, were all the blood and guts? Troilus and Criseyde had not messed about like this, enjoying a pale safe imitation of the real thing. ‘Isn’t that why she keeps writing to you?’ I demanded crossly.

  ‘She writes because she’s lonely.’ He made the statement as though it were obvious and any fool should know it. ‘She thinks she wants sex but really she needs someone to talk to. Mrs Salmon was the same. Most women are. They just want someone to hug and someone to listen. It’s ludicrously simple. If the average man only realised that, he could have the time of his life.’

  I considered this piece of wisdom, so carelessly dispensed. It seemed desperately sad, but I could not afford to let myself become sentimental at this stage in the game.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, without real interest in the subject, ‘why are you so obsessed with true love?’

  I answered snappily, ‘Perhaps because I’ve never experienced it.’

  ‘What about when you were young?’ An unnecessarily cruel thrust, I felt.

  ‘It’s not a matter of age,’ I replied with dignity. ‘It’s a matter of temperament.’

  ‘Come off it. We’ve all been through the mill at least once.’

  Really he was so crude. All this coarse and outdated slang. It was just as well for him that he was good-looking or he would never have had any success in life at all.

  ‘Perhaps some of us learn from experience sooner than others.’

  That would have to satisfy him. I was concerned with other people’s exposure, not my own. He actually laughed.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Let’s just say I grew up at a very early age.’

  He lit yet another cigarette from the stub of the old one, a detestable habit. It was extremely irritating that I still found him attractive. I hoped something bad would happen to him, and soon. A domestic disaster, since his career was already gratifyingly in ruins: perhaps the geyser could explode, his wife and children fall ill, the landlord suggest eviction. It was, after all, too early for Criseyde to betray Troilus. The affair had not yet run its appointed course.

  ‘It sounds to me,’ he said judiciously, ‘as if someone hurt you pretty badly.’

  I poured myself another martini, ignoring his empty glass. ‘You’ve been reading too much paperback psychology,’
I said.

  (4)

  ‘Dear David,

  Sorry I had to hang up so quickly only Chris walked in just at that moment. Of course I was thrilled about your part – it’s marvellous news – but does it really mean we can’t meet for two whole weeks? Seems an awfully long time and with Xmas so near – I don’t know, I find this time of year so depressing nowadays and I used to enjoy it, I suppose because when I was young it was all done for me whereas now it’s up to me to do it all. It just seems like a lot of shopping for food and drinks and presents, all for people I don’t really like – well, most of them anyway. We will be able to meet before Xmas, won’t we? I was so looking forward to having a really leisurely lunch with heaps of time to make love, and I’ve got such plans for your present.

  I suppose it really is impossible to meet if you’re rehearsing every day and I know work has to come first, but if you do get any time off do ring up, won’t you, I can get up to town at very short notice to do shopping or have lunch with Uncle A. – at least till the children break up, then of course it takes more organising. Anyway, I hope the rehearsals go well.

  Keep in touch.

  Gemma’

  In terms of content, hardly worth the effort of opening and resealing, I thought crossly as I made it good. However, the plaintive tone was appealing and I was quite fascinated by the child-like confidence with which she revealed her feelings. No attempt at dissimulation. No suspicion that anything she said might be used against her. She was so simple and trusting. It was probably that very quality that endeared her to both of us – and would doubtless be her downfall.

  I invited her to lunch: she was pale, restless, lacking her usual appetite. I thought I even detected reluctance to come to the flat knowing he would not be there, which annoyed me: I did not want to be dependent on him for her visits, when it should be the other way round. She fidgeted, didn’t appreciate the food, drank too much and seemed to wander about touching the furniture to soothe herself – as if where David’s duster had rested, she too could be at peace. It was true that he had a job: he had told me about it with disgusting smugness. But it certainly didn’t mean he had no time to meet Gemma: that was policy. He was in fact still cleaning my flat (though at peculiar hours such as seven o’clock at night) and the part he was so nauseatingly triumphant about only amounted to a few lines, as I later discovered when I forced myself to watch it on the television. He was playing another of his petty crooks (which seemed appropriate enough) and playing it rather badly. I suppose when you work so seldom you get out of practice.