walks round city walls, or the views from your villa or hotel?
They’re never just travelogues. You write of things no one but you
would have noticed, or if they did wouldn’t bother to recall:
the woman whose sun hat blew off, the Russian oligarch with hairy wrists,
the changing red of the roof tiles in Florence as the sun went down.
The only blank spot is him. But I can’t help filling out the picture –
there he is buying you drinks or lying in wait while you finish in the bathroom.
That’s the reason I’ve deleted all the emails. It’s bad enough
having to think of him at all and even worse when you’re away.
To a Cuckold
Miles, mate, you don’t know me, and if you did you wouldn’t like me,
and if you knew what I get up to with your missus you’d like me even less.
But honest, I’m doing you a favour. Haven’t you noticed how sweet
and attentive she’s become, how she sings when cooking supper
and never complains when you spend Sundays at the golf course?
She’s lost weight, too, and looks younger. Why be jealous? It’s me who endures
her guilt and remorse, whereas with you she’s happily uxorious.
The key to a good marriage is adultery, you see: every husband needs a louse
to warm the bed for him, every union a bastard like me. So when you find out
and come looking for me, don’t bring a knife, bring a thank-you present.
The day she stops betraying you is the day your problems begin.
Two
No man could possibly fall in love/With two girls at once
Why can’t a man love two women at once?
We’re brought up to love two parents.
And no mother stops at one child
In case her love for it should die with a second.
I don’t love strawberries any less
Because I also love grapes.
So can a woman love two men at once?
Of course. Same rule applies.
As the poet says, love is accommodating,
It makes room. If there’s no threat
That your love for me will lessen,
You can love whoever you choose.
Before They Met
Afterwards, drinking tea, their backs against
The headboard, the lights still off,
He asks about the others, before him,
‘Not that the numbers matter or who they were,
I’m just curious to know all about you.’
She’s shy, sipping her lapsang to play for time,
And protests that it’s ancient history
And anyway very dull, not like his past.
They laugh, as though the subject’s been dropped,
But when he persists, since it’s no big deal,
She offers him Tom, the first boy she kissed,
Then Rick, the first to touch her breasts,
Then Harry, ‘The first I had proper sex with,
If you can call it that.’ ‘And you were how old?’
‘Sixteen.’ ‘That’s young.’ ‘Is it? When did you first …?’
‘Forget about me. How old was this Harry?’
‘Twenty.’ ‘Bloody cradle-snatcher,’ he laughs,
and kisses her again, and strokes her hair.
‘So you started at sixteen,’ he resumes,
‘You must have clocked up quite a few by now.’
‘I thought you said we weren’t doing numbers.’
‘No, but roughly how many would you say?’
‘This is daft. Can you remember all your lovers?
Even the one-night stands?’ ‘So you’ve had those?’
She sips more tea. ‘You’re cross-examining me.
‘I don’t like where it’s going, but OK then:
Fifty.’ ‘Fifty!’ ‘No, two hundred.’ ‘What!’ ‘Or twelve,
Was it? Or maybe just two.’ ‘You’re fucking with me.’
‘All that counts is that I’m with you now.
We love each other. At least I thought we did …
Now I wonder.’ ‘I wonder, too,’ he shouts,
leaning over and grabbing her wrists
and forcing her head back on the pillow
as the darkness tightens inside her,
and the digits mount on the alarm clock
and she knows as sure as death that they’ve no future.
11
An internal email came from Emma, asking if we could have a quick drink after work: ‘I’m in need of some advice.’ I’d noticed her looking glum around the office and assumed she was having problems with Michael; she wouldn’t be the first. OK, I replied: it was a Thursday, press day, when Marie’s used to me getting home late, and an extra half-hour would make no difference. I suggested The Plough, one of the few pubs nearby where journalists are rarely to be seen: if Emma was upset, it’d be best to go somewhere quiet. I emailed her again as I was leaving and said I’d see her there, but she caught me in the lobby, so we left the building together. I hoped no one seeing us would get the wrong idea.
The pub was crowded. We stood outside, me with a Guinness, she with a rum and Coke, the sort of drink I associate with teenagers. With her milky skin, Emma looked like a teenager, though she can’t have been much under thirty, having worked on various magazines before joining the paper. In which case she was only a few years younger than Marie, though in terms of maturity it could have been decades.
‘So?’ I asked, after the preliminaries of office gossip. ‘You’ve been looking a bit down.’
‘That’s my work face. My ex-boyfriend used to say I look suicidal when I’m concentrating.’ She laughed. ‘It’s sweet of you to worry about me. If I came to work with a noose round my neck, Michael wouldn’t notice.’
‘You wanted some advice?’
She was keen to do some writing for the paper, she said, and wondered if I had any tips. She’d asked Michael several times – there were low-profile spots to fill whenever the regulars were away (TV previews, exhibition round-ups, fringe theatre shorts, etc.), but he always fobbed her off.
‘I wrote half the student paper when I was at York.’
‘What kind of stuff?’ I said.
‘Anything. Everything. News features. Op-ed columns. But mostly arts and books. More books than arts, in fact. I was chair of the Poetry Society and used to interview the authors that came.’
‘Did you ever have Rob Pope?’
‘Who?’
‘Robert Pope. A friend of mine. He died recently.’
‘Oh, Robert Pope. The Bow-Tie Poet, right? I think we tried to get him but the dates didn’t work. People said he was difficult to deal with. Were you close?’
‘Ish. He was quite a bit older than me.’
‘Obviously,’ she laughed, nudging my arm. ‘I’m more into fiction these days. The innovative stuff. Ed McKeane sort of thing. Same again? Let me get them this time.’ She stood up. ‘He’s got a book of stories coming out soon. No doubt you’ve already lined up a review.’
I could see where this was going, but the Guinness had neutralised my defences. Emma wasn’t like the usual hacks who come wheedling round. She was smart, well read and looking for a break. Why not? I’d been in the same position once. It’s tough when you’re young. And at that moment, gawky, bamboo-limbed, spilling our drinks as she came back, Emma seemed very young.
I told her how the paper had been when I first joined. A lot had changed since then, I said – in my life as well as the job. A needier person might have made more of my quip (when admitting I was married) that ‘wedding ring’ is an anagram of ‘grim ending’. Emma didn’t; she even worked out that they weren’t anagrams. I said that I’d speak to Leonie and if a suitable book came along maybe she could do it for us. In-house reviewers are useful, because they don’t have to be paid. Not that I put it like that to Emma. We
parted with a hug and a promise to do it again sometime. It was ten by the time I got home.
There was no reason to feel guilty: if a guy can’t have a drink after work now and then … But when I found myself telling Marie I’d been out with colleagues, plural, I realised I did. For the first time in years, home seemed flat and Marie drably middle-aged.
I knew that Rob’s poems were mixed up with this, but it took me a while to work out why. My main feeling on reading the new batch was one of betrayal – betrayal of me as well as Jill. Though he’d been less open with me since marrying, he’d given no hint of being involved with anyone. And when he made me his executor he hadn’t warned me what I would find. If the poems were made public, reviewers would doubtless call his confessionalism ‘brave’. But wasn’t it cowardly to write candid poems then hide them in a drawer? And cowardly to leave the fate of your work in the hands of others? The love affair, so the poems suggested, had been clandestine. But he knew that once I read them, the secret would be out. In theory I was free to publish the poems without consulting Jill. But that was absurd. She’d already said she’d like to read the earlier poems I’d found and I could hardly not show her these. What a mess. Marie was right. I’d spent too many years in thrall to Rob. The adjectives that people used about him – single-minded, uncompromising – no longer seemed to fit. I felt angry and taken for granted. He’d landed me in the shit.
What sort of affair had it been? Not, by the sound of it, a casual one. It had gone on for some time. There’d been regular visits to a hotel. And – assuming the man in the last poem was Rob – he’d been driven to extremes of jealousy. Most telling of all, he’d confessed to loving two women at once. The last time I saw Jill, she’d spoken of Rob ‘going off the rails’ after her miscarriage. Had an affair been part of that? Or could it date back to a time before, when he’d been involved with a married woman but was still single? Could Jill herself (not yet divorced when they first met) be the woman in question? Or could it be Corinne? He’d talked about going to a motel with her – ‘h’, ‘m’, what was the difference? The affair had been the source of suffering as well as pleasure: of pain, envy and mistrust. But there was nothing to suggest he regretted it. Or that anyone in the same position should feel guilty. The mood wasn’t mournful or apologetic. It was buoyant.
After my evening with Emma, the buoyancy felt like a challenge or even a reproach – an invitation to me to reappraise my life, my marriage, my sexuality. You’ll never catch me looking at another woman, I’d often told Marie. And when she did (how can anyone not look?), she used it as a pretext for a renewal of vows. On one occasion (we were in a restaurant) she accused me of ogling a woman at a nearby table. Sexual appraisal, she called it. No, aesthetic appreciation, I replied. Even if I did fancy another woman I wouldn’t do anything about it, I said. Why not? she said. It would be a step into the unknown, I said. All you’re saying is you’re too scared, she said, you need to do better than that. It’d destroy your trust in me, I said. Still not good enough, she said. It would hurt you, I said, and I couldn’t bear that. Better, she said, but still inadequate. I would never sleep with anyone else, I said, because I love you. OK, she said, that’ll have to do. Her own take was different: since marrying and having kids, she didn’t want to fuck anyone else. Moreover, she’d never behave in the manner of people she despised, meaning (though at that point she’d no idea how he had behaved) people like Rob. She intended to reassure me, though in some ways I’d have felt better if she had been like Rob. Or rather, since of course I’d have felt worse, I’d have felt reassured to know that it was normal to imagine having sex with someone other than your partner. Marie denied having such fantasies, whereas I had them all the time. Faithful sounded a good thing to be. But was a faithful husband – or this faithful husband – merely lacking in imagination? Or someone without the initiative to make the imaginary real?
I was only Rob’s executor, not the focus of his ambitions. It was paranoid to think he’d set out to mess with my head. On the other hand, knowing me as he did, he must have foreseen that the poems would have an effect. That they’d unsettle and arouse me. That while making love to Marie, I’d imagine I was with someone else – Emma, Leonie, the barmaid at the squash club, the girl with the nose-ring in the local Pret. You should have told me, I imagined telling him. Told you what? Told me you’d written poems about an affair. And told me who she was.
I hadn’t known the confessional Rob of the poems. That Rob was a new person. So was Rob the gardener, Rob the dog-owner, Rob the almost-parent, Rob the settled suburbanite. The old Rob was fading. I now had several of him in my head.
It occurred to me that I had known this latest Rob – or that he’d once hinted at his existence. It would have been over ten years ago, before he moved to Hadingfield. We were gossiping about a government minister who’d been done over in the tabloids for having an affair.
‘Don’t they just love that word cheat?’ he said.
‘What do you call it?’
‘Cheat’s what people do playing cards. It’s nothing to do with passion.’
‘He’s a Tory shit,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why you’re defending him.’
‘I’m trying to do justice to the offence. We’re talking treachery, tragedy, three or more people’s lives wrecked.’
‘Yeah, yeah, love’s the ruin of people – you once told me that. You also said that by remembering the past we can avoid repeating it.’
‘I used to think that. But I was wrong. Remembering the past doesn’t stop us repeating it. The only difference is we know we’re repeating it. We even watch ourselves.’
‘When you say “we” …?’
‘I’m talking in general,’ he said, and changed the subject.
In general? No, he’d been talking about himself. He’d fallen in love. And feared that ruin would follow. Or that ruin had already come.
‘What did I tell you?’ Louis said. ‘He had another woman.’
‘Assuming the poems are autobiographical.’
‘Of course they’re fucking autobiographical.’
With the first batch, Louis had been slow to respond. This time he was on the phone within an hour.
‘Even if they are,’ I said, trying to convince myself, ‘the affair might have predated Jill.’
‘Except that he talks about sending emails. And he married Jill before he ever sent emails.’
‘It’s true. No getting round it.’
‘I know magazine editors who’ll be keen to take them,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to run them in your Review section.’
‘The will says we should aim at a collection.’
‘There aren’t enough. We’d need thirty for that.’
‘Jill hasn’t seen them yet,’ I said.
‘What’s it matter? If I get a good offer, she won’t object.’
I’d always known Louis was an odd mixture: old-school man of letters on the one hand, new-school wheeler-dealer on the other. I was surprised by his tone, even so.
‘The money doesn’t interest her,’ I said. ‘That was never the point.’
‘It’ll make a good story.’
‘Posthumously published poems about an unknown woman – I can’t see it, Louis.’
‘I’m the agent here, Matt – trust me.’
‘OK, but hold your horses. I’ve not quite finished looking yet.’
12
I had promised Jill I would be finished by the summer. And even with the time I’d squandered on my own writing, rather than collating Rob’s, it still looked possible: a couple more visits should be enough. But Marie was now back at work part-time and I had to miss the next Friday to stay home looking after Mabel, who had a chest infection. Then Leonie took her annual fortnight in early July, which meant me missing two more. In theory that still left several more Fridays before our holiday in mid-August – Lanzarote, this time – until a cock-up on the books pages intervened.
In itself, it was a harmless mistake: the ph
otos of two authors being reviewed together were transposed. That the captions were also transposed, with contrasting one-word verdicts (‘brilliant’, ‘lifeless’) appearing below the wrong author, made the mistake more embarrassing, but these things happen. Our pictures editor spotted the error after we’d gone to press and we changed it for the online edition. No big deal, I thought, until Leonie returned on the Monday.
‘That picture and caption fuck-up …’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said,
‘“Lifeless”, the caption said.’
‘When it should have said “brilliant”, I know.’
‘“Lifeless”, when, as the review pointed out, the author died two years ago.’
‘Shit, I didn’t spot that.’
‘I’m being bombarded by emails from his agent. The family think it was meant as some kind of sick joke.’
‘I hope you’ve told them it wasn’t your fault.’
‘I’m the books editor, Matt. I have to take responsibility.’
‘Not if you’re away.’
‘If the staff I employ fuck up, it’s down to me. Even if the photos had been right, I thought we agreed to avoid negative captions. “Lifeless”, for fuck’s sake.’
I’d known Leonie lose her temper with others, but never with me. She was stony for the rest of the day, most of which she spent in the book cupboard not even pretending to consult me about commissions. At five she suggested a coffee in the basement canteen. Since the coffee there is even worse than the coffee from the machine on our floor, I knew coffee wasn’t the point.
We sat alone at a corner table, out of earshot of other journalists.
‘Forget the captions,’ Leonie said. ‘There’s something else we need to discuss. The paper’s about to announce a voluntary redundancy scheme.’
‘Right.’
‘I’ve always said I can’t afford to lose anyone. There’s only you and me full-time, plus Chris with his three days and Gina with her two on the web pages. Other sections are better staffed. But they also have more page traffic. It’s a struggle making the case.’
‘Are you saying I should take redundancy?’
The Executor Page 16
