by India Knight
‘And scarlet lipstick.’ Robert smiles a sad kind of smile.
‘Yes, and earrings as big as the Eiffel Tower. I looked like I belonged with the prozzies on the rue St Denis.’
‘You looked great,’ Robert says sombrely. ‘We had fun.’
‘God, didn’t we?’ I lapse into silence for a while. ‘Funny how we’d never been back, until now.’
‘Hmm,’ says Robert. ‘I didn’t want to book us back into the Georges V.’
‘Oh, no, absolutely,’ I agree, nodding very quickly, because – hello – I am feeling very slightly tearful. He can think what he likes, but we were young. Young, dumb and full of hope.
‘How’s your hangover?’ asks Robert. ‘Will you drink some wine?’
‘Absolutely,’ I nod. ‘Red. Especially,’ I add, smiling and trying to lighten the mood, ‘if you’re going to insist on your marital rights.’
‘You prefer to be drunk?’ asks Robert. He doesn’t look up. He is playing with breadcrumbs, brushing them one way, and then another, and lining them up, while perusing the wine list.
‘Of course not,’ I laugh. ‘I was joking. Well, a bit. It’s odd, you know, when you haven’t done it for a while…’
‘Hardly a very long while,’ says Robert, still absorbed in the carte des vins. ‘A few weeks.’
‘Three months, actually.’
Robert says nothing.
‘I wasn’t in the bath,’ I say.
‘When?’
‘Earlier. I wasn’t in the bath. I didn’t want you to come into the bathroom. So I said I was in the bath. Which wasn’t true.’
‘Why didn’t you want me to come in?’
‘Because I’m covered in boils,’ I joke feebly, not entirely liking the direction I can’t help steering the conversation towards.
‘Why didn’t you want me to come in?’ Robert repeats.
‘I didn’t want you to think I looked fat, or plain, or… or homely,’ I say sheepishly, folding a corner of my napkin into tiny little squares.
‘I don’t think that.’
I down the rest of my champagne in one.
‘You were surprised, last night, weren’t you?’ I say. ‘That I looked nice. That I looked – sexy.’ I’m embarrassed to have said it, and cover up. ‘Very sexy. Sexy laydee. Ha ha, Robert. That I looked hot.’
Robert doesn’t smile and doesn’t help me out. He pauses and then he says, ‘Yes.’
‘It’s hard work, you know. It takes hours. I’d like to look like that all the time too, but I can’t. Time…’
‘I know. You have no time,’ he says, sounding exceptionally bored.
This is not right. He isn’t looking at me. I know what he is supposed to say. Perhaps I could say it for him. He could say, ‘But I don’t care, darling. You’re always beautiful, to me. I love your face, you see, and I love you. I love the you in your face.’ He could quote Yeats and tell me he’ll love me, and my face, and my body, when I am old, and grey, and full of sleep. He could say – I’d say it, the other way round – that when you see someone you love, crying and sweating and shaking, looking very plain indeed, about to be wheeled into a theatre to give birth to your child – to your lovely child, that you made out of love – then nothing matters afterwards any more. No plainness. No lack of make-up. No looking sexy all the time. He made me a mother and I will always be grateful; he could murder me now, and I’d still say thank you for that. But then he took something away from me: his desire; my old self. My old self died when Charlie’s wet, soft head appeared. I don’t mind; I never did. But Robert would like it back. And it’s too late. And it shouldn’t matter, but it does.
‘Robert?’ I ask, and in the very act of asking find myself humiliated beyond humiliation. ‘Robert, why don’t you want to sleep with me?’
‘Clara. For God’s sake.’ Robert lowers his voice to a sibilant hiss. ‘It’s been a few weeks, that’s all.’
‘Three months. It’s never been three months before. A term. Quarter of a year.’
‘Sometimes it has.’
‘No, it hasn’t.’
Robert changes tack. ‘I hardly notice you bursting with enthusiasm,’ he says.
‘I’m scared of rejection.’
Robert bursts out laughing. ‘Ohhhh,’ he says, in a cod-American, self-help accent. ‘Poor baby. Have you got in touch with your inner child recently, Clara? Really!’ He laughs again. ‘Scared of rejection! You bite, Clara. You’re not scared. Of rejection, or anything else.’ He actually looks up at me and beams, as if I’d made a really especially terrific joke.
‘I wasn’t joking,’ I say. ‘I am scared of rejection. Everyone is. I’d rather you didn’t sleep with me than that I tried to make you and you turned me down.’
‘You’re not everyone,’ he says, choosing to miss the point. ‘You’re a’ – he winces at the word, but seems incapable of thinking up another one – ‘survivor.’
‘For God’s sake, Robert.’ My temper rears up. ‘No one wakes up in the morning out of choice thinking, Hello sky, hello trees, today I’m going to be a fucking survivor. Today I’m going to pretend I’m all alone in the world, because that’s the kind of terrific, fun challenge I enjoy. I am not a survivor, Robert, not by choice, and it is really completely moronic of you – after eight years! Eight YEARS! – to think I am. What kind of creature do you have me for?’
‘A tough one,’ says Robert hopefully.
‘Toughened glass,’ I say. ‘Not shatter-proof.’
We take silent bites of our starters – something simple and aesthetically pleasing for him: a potato and truffle salad; something messy and all over the place for me: linguine with chunks of lobster, which match my burning face and smear my cheeks.
‘It’s what I like about you,’ says Robert quietly.
‘What is?’
‘That you’re tough. That you’re not whingey. That you get on with, it.’
‘It’s what you like about me?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s what you like?’
‘Clara, please.’
‘Well, you like the wrong thing. I don’t want you to like me for that. You like me because I don’t cry, basically,’ I laugh, as one fat tear starts rolling down my cheek. ‘Big mistake, Robert. You’d better stop liking me.’
‘I’ll never stop liking you, no matter… Don’t cry, Clara.’ He leans over and wipes my tear – why can’t I muster up more? Torrents would be nice – with his scratchy linen napkin. I notice the cloth has mopped up some pasta sauce, as well as my tear. I was crying with a lobstery face. ‘Please don’t be sad,’ he says.
‘I am sad,’ I say. ‘And I am tired.’
‘We could go up…’
‘No! I mean I am tired of pretending that everything’s okay. That this is what happens when you have been married for a time. That everyone goes through it. That it’s okay and normal and completely fucking fine for your husband not to want you. That it’s fine, fine, fine for your husband to think you’re tough and don’t need any sleep or any help or God forbid any support That it’s normal for you to put me down…’
‘I don’t put you down.’
‘Big Pig. Shops that do size 18. Pretending me telling you about my day makes you fall asleep. Letting the boys hurt themselves because you’re listening to opera. Because you’re tired. Ha! I could go on. That it’s perfectly fucking ordinary never to talk about anything that matters. Like our children. Like choosing schools. Like the way you think it’s funny not to know Charlie’s teacher’s name. Like why you wouldn’t come to Somerset with me. Like…’
‘I tease you less than you tease me, Clara.’
‘I’m not cruel, Robert. Not to you.’
Robert puts his head in his-hands as the waiter clears our starter away.
‘It is normal,’ says Robert. ‘It’s called marriage. We get on, don’t we? We like each other. We potter along.’
‘Spare me,’ I shout. ‘Spare me. I’m thirty-three. And so are you. I d
on’t want to fucking potter. I don’t want my children to have a mother who potters all by herself.’
‘It’s what people do,’ says Robert quietly.
My fury melts away. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘You’re selfish, Clara, and so am I.’
‘Am I?’ I wonder out loud. ‘Am I that bad? Am I really freakishly, uniquely selfish?’
‘Yes,’ says Robert, giving me a terse smile. ‘But you’re not as bad as me.’
‘I don’t think I’m that bad,’ I say, every iota of self-deprecation deserting me. ‘I don’t think I’m that much of a monster. I could do it, Robert. I could go on, and on, and on, for decades – till death us do part. I could do it, if I didn’t feel so… so by myself. So lonely. And,’ I add, catching his expression, ‘I know that sounds feeble, and wet, and repulsive. And self-indulgent. But I’m on my own, Robert, with you. All by myself, with you. You know that poem?’
‘Christ. What poem?’ Robert frowns. ‘Do you really have to quote something at me now?’
I ignore him. ‘I sleep with thee and wake with thee, And yet thou art not there; I fill my arms with thoughts of thee – and press the common air.’ I take a sip of my wine. ‘John Clare. I’m interpreting it wrong. But it’s what I feel like.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Robert. ‘I’m sorry if you feel like that.’
‘So am I,’ I say. ‘And I’m sorry you’d never noticed.’
‘I hadn’t,’ says Robert. ‘I just thought you had quite a nice time.’
‘I did. I do.’ Oh, never mind. I can’t be bothered with this, I think to myself. I can do without the melodrama. I can do without feeling scared. Whatever. Never mind. It’ll be okay. I say, ‘Never mind, Robert. Let’s just leave it. You know now, at any rate. Let’s be glad you know and let’s have a lovely weekend.’
‘Okay,’ says Robert, exhaling loudly. ‘What shall we do tomorrow?’
‘I don’t know. Go to the Louvre? Go shopping? Go for lunch? Go to the flea markets?’
‘I need to go to Versailles,’ says Robert.
‘Do you? Why?’
‘To see about using a bit of it as a location for a fashion shoot,’ says Robert, looking at his nails. ‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while.’
‘But it’ll take hours. It’ll take up the whole afternoon, Robert, and it’s our last day. And we spent two days there the last time we were here… I’d rather go shopping,’ I say.
‘So would I, really, but this needs to be done. Why don’t we split up?’
‘Think of the children,’ I say, flippant to the last.
Robert doesn’t laugh. ‘I don’t know how,’ he says bitterly. ‘I meant tomorrow afternoon. Why don’t I go to Versailles after an early lunch – go at 2, say – and meet you somewhere for tea? What’s that pretty tea-room called, on the rue de Rivoli?’
‘Angélina’s. They make the best hot chocolate.’
‘Yes, Angélina’s. Why don’t I meet you there at 5?’
‘Hmm,’ I say reluctantly. ‘If you really have to go. It’s only three hours, though, I suppose. And you get bored in make-up shops,’ I add, brightening up. ‘And in Prisunic.’
‘I’ve never understood your fascination for stationery,’ Robert says drily. ‘I can think of better things to go into ecstasies over than exercise books.’
‘It’s partly the smell of clean paper,’ I laugh, and so does he. ‘And the feel of the pages. And the lovely colours, and lovely French pens.’
‘Well,’ says Robert, ‘you can have a paper-fest, and I’ll nip off, and we can go for tea and maybe early supper – the flight isn’t till 10.’
‘Okay,’ I say, cheered by the thought of all those lined cahiers and notepaper and folders and biros. ‘That’s what we’ll do.’
‘Pudding,’ says Robert.
‘Sweetheart,’ I say.
We both snigger amicably.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Not for me. I’m tired. Maybe just coffee.’
‘But you hate coffee,’ says Robert.
And I don’t say, Yes, but I’m scared of sharing a bed with you and I don’t want to go up yet. I say, ‘There’s always a first time.’
22
I have another bath, back in our extravagantly lovely, sexily luxurious suite. I read my book in the scented water; a nice book, in which nice people are happy pottering and forgive small affairs and big misdemeanours.
When I come out, an hour or so later, not wearing the black lace slip I had anticipated but rather an old pair of pyjama bottoms and a very loose T-shirt – it’s not especially flattering, no – Robert is flicking between CNN and MTV, as men of his age tend to do. Am I young or old? they ask themselves with each press of the button. Am I still fun, or the kind of person who writes letters to newspapers? I want to be both, oh please let me be both. Flick, flick. Woah, baby. Flick. Oh good, the FTSE.
Nothing happens. I get into bed, removing the single, foil-wrapped Godiva chocolate that’s been left on my pillow. I turn off my bedside lamp and wriggle down. I close my eyes. I am wide awake.
‘Are you feeling better, Clara?’ asks Robert, not taking his eyes off Brittney Spear’s gyrations.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I say politely.
What would happen, now, if he got frisky? Would it help? No, to be perfectly frank with you, it wouldn’t. There is such a thing as the kind of sex that heals all wounds, the kind of sex that repairs, the kind of sex that so floods you with intimacy that it forgives. But that’s not the kind of sex we have. Which isn’t a complaint as much as a statement of fact. We have the kind of sex that makes you laugh. Giggly, chummy sex. Pal sex. Well, that’s not strictly true. At the moment, of course, we have no sex.
Later, much later, when I am still awake, though silent and closed-eyed, Robert finally puts his light out. He lies there stiffly – no, not stiffly in that way – and arranges his limbs into neat shapes. He smells of Extract of Limes and soap. His hand reaches out and strokes my hair. And then he sighs. Oh, such a sigh.
Things are always better in the morning. Always. Everything’s worse at night: blacker, sharper, more final, more hysterical. And although I don’t quite wake up filled with delirious, Pollyanna-esque joy, I get quite close. No hangover for starters. A morning’s strolling and an afternoon’s shopping; lunch at La Coupole. It could be worse, couldn’t it? Christ, it could be worse. Everything could be worse, all the time. And that is the moral of the story. That is the thing to remember.
By breakfast time, I’m rather embarrassed by the previous evening’s little outburst. Not so ashamed that I’d actually apologize, I decide on reflection – it’s a close call – but ashamed all the same. I must have inherited my melodramatic streak from Kate. I can’t believe I cried like that, like an imbecile, with lobster on my face. There was no need, I tell myself sternly, to nag and bitch and whinge. What did I think I was doing? What did I think was going to happen?
Anything, anything for an easy life.
Robert, on the other hand, isn’t especially talkative this morning. He flicks through French Vogue at breakfast, gazing up at me silently every now and then. Perhaps he’s comparing me to the models, I think, as I bite defiantly into an especially, reassuringly delicious brioche. Never mind. Never mind anything. I smile at his head; he looks up and smiles back. It’s a funny sort of smile: wistful.
We wander around St Germain for a couple of hours, looking at paintings and overpriced antiques. We stop for coffee once or twice. We don’t hold hands, I don’t even hold his arm, but the pavements are very narrow. I make him go to a toy shop called, unattractively, the Blue Dwarf, and we buy little presents for the boys. I don’t say anything annoying when Robert says, ‘What does Jack like?’
Lunch is very civilized and almost calorie-free: ice-cold white wine and oysters, and a bracing sorbet for pudding. I feel rather Parisienne, with my little lunch-time régime. Robert reads a copy of Glamour which he has bizarrely brought with him all the way from Lo
ndon. I didn’t realize he read all the French mags as well as the British ones.
He eventually tears himself away from the page. ‘Where are you going?’ he asks, with Gallic politesse.
‘I’m just going to sort of roam about,’ I reply. ‘I haven’t made a very detailed plan. Make-up and paper are what I’m really after, and maybe clothes.’
‘Buy clothes,’ says Robert. ‘You have piles of make-up and piles of paper.’
‘Maybe. I don’t know if I can be arsed to try stuff on.’
‘It’s hardly exhausting. Here,’ he says, peeling off a number of large notes from a fat wad of French francs, ‘buy yourself a present, from me.’
‘How sweet!’ I cry. ‘How kind, Robert. Thank you. I will.’ I blow him a kiss. The elderly man at the table opposite, lunching alone, notices, and smiles at me. I smile back. My husband even gives me money for presents: a new blessing.
‘Who are you smiling at?’ asks Robert.
‘That sweet old man, over there,’ I say, ‘behind you. He smiled when I blew you a kiss.’
‘He probably saw me giving you the money,’ Robert says. ‘He probably thinks you’re a prostitute.’ It is his turn to smile.
No, I don’t find it very funny either.
He goes off, rather regally, in one of the hotel’s chauffeured cars. He is rather regally dressed to impress the no doubt über-snobs who run Versailles. He waves to me regally. Someone is going to lose their head, I think, bonkersly. Also: he might have offered me a lift.
I shop. I shop, and shop, and shop. I sniff and stroke to my heart’s content in La Papeterie, my favourite stationers ever. I buy scent, something very grand and very old and Not Available in London, from the Guerlain boutique (I agree with Kate: modern scents all smell of plastic, or worse). I buy little snowshakers containing the Eiffel tower for the boys. (‘Do they need two presents?’ ‘Yes, Robert.’ See? I even talk to him in my head. Because we are married!) I buy make-up, and have some of it applied at the Galeries Lafayette’s Chanel counter: dark dark eyes, red red lips. I feel Frencher and Frencher, with my carmine mouth and empty stomach. I spy high, high, ludicrous, pink snakeskin shoes at Christian Loboutin, with a feather trim (‘He thought you were a prostitute’) and as I sit, trying them on, I think, for a second, of Dunphy’s party. These aren’t dancing shoes either, is what I think, and then I think: we danced very close. And then I buy the shoes.
