The Paper Lovers

by Gerard Woodward

  ‘These are very beautiful books,’ said the woman. ‘I wonder what you would do with the paper for Ryan’s book.’

  ‘Well, that’s an interesting question. His main subject, as far as I can tell, is paper. And our books are already made of that.’

  ‘Would you publish him under his pen name?’ the husband said, ignoring this dilemma.

  ‘Yes, unless he suggests otherwise. It’s the author’s choice how they would like to be known, usually.’

  ‘We would like to have a proper contract drawn up,’ said Martin’s mother, ‘so that everything is above board.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And we don’t want you to feel that you’ve been blackmailed into publishing his book. He would have cut his wrists anyway, it was nothing to do with you . . .’

  ‘. . . It doesn’t seem to matter what happens in his life, when his mood gets dark, nothing can bring him round. Nothing.’

  ‘He lost quite a bit of blood this time. He hasn’t done that before. He’s taken pills before . . .’

  Polly felt terrible for talking earlier about the blood paper. She tried to think of how to make up for it. She would produce the most beautiful paper for Martin’s book. She didn’t know what, yet, but it would be something special.

  ‘We don’t want you to publish them just out of sympathy for him. We want you to publish them because you think they are good poems. Otherwise it’s a waste of time.’

  Polly nodded obediently.

  ‘And of course we’ll have to speak to Ryan about it. I’m sure he would be pleased to have them published, whatever he may say. His mood can change so quickly. It would help him. Give him something solid to point to and say I did that.’

  They talked a little more, but the parents soon seemed to exhaust themselves of words. They continued to thank Polly for taking an interest in their son’s poems, to such an extent that she felt embarrassed. She had the awkward feeling that the conversation had somehow transformed her original offer to give them a quick decision on Martin’s poems into a firm promise to publish them.

  As the couple made to leave she felt suddenly compelled to ask them a question that had sprung to her mind.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you something? You said your son cut his wrists. It may seem odd, but can you tell me what he used?’

  The couple looked so untroubled by this question you might have assumed they were asked it every few hours.

  ‘He used scissors,’ said the woman. ‘That’s one reason he was unsuccessful. They weren’t very sharp.’

  She had wondered for a while whether or not to tell Arnold about Martin Guerre. Since he had declared himself a Christian, she no longer trusted him. She was interested, on the other hand, to see how he would react to the news of Martin’s attempted suicide. Knowing now how closely the boy trod the margins of rational existence, would Arnold feel some retrospective guilt at his treatment of the young man? Might he be racked with remorse for the things he wrote on his first submission of poems? If so, did he deserve to be? Now that he was a Christian, would he have a different strategy for dealing with it? The old Arnold would have felt sorry for the boy, but then nothing more. He would have tried to dismiss it as something beyond his control. What would the new Arnold do? Pray, presumably. And perhaps go and visit the boy in his sickbed, and pray by his side. As far as Polly was concerned, that was the last thing Martin Guerre needed, a born-again Christian poet who had previously written nasty comments on his poems, praying for his soul.

  She also feared that, as a Christian, he would object even more strongly to the publication of the poems, emerging, as they did, from what he regarded as immoral desires. He might now share the sensibilities of that student he’d told her about, who would leave the room whenever sex was mentioned. He had seen Martin’s poems (mistakenly, in her view) as thinly veiled expressions of sexual obsession for her, Polly. His fear, she supposed, was that they would release into the world a plausible narrative of his wife’s infidelity that people might actually believe.

  On the other hand, might it not be a rather cruel thing to withhold the information about Martin? Arnold had shown signs that he cared about him. She wrestled with this problem for a while, and it was forgotten about in the little storm that was whipped up by the different news that Arnold had to tell her.

  He was going to Africa.

  She had been in her office at home, the corner of the living room that she had furnished with a small desk and a set of shelves. She had been working on her monthly accounts, entering the data from her receipts and invoices onto a spreadsheet, when he casually dropped the news.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Probably next month. Before Christmas, at the latest.’

  She turned in her chair to face him.

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Just a couple of weeks. Maybe a bit longer, it depends. I’ve made a bid for some research leave, I’m owed a lot, so I should be free from teaching for the rest of the term.’

  He seemed to think she should be pleased for him.

  ‘Only it’s not research now, is it? You’re going there because you want to spread the word. You’re a missionary.’

  ‘I’m helping out with a building project.’

  ‘Ha! What have you ever built?’

  She didn’t like the way she said this, and felt ashamed at being so scornful. But the anger was mounting.

  ‘Tell me the truth. Was there ever a novel?’

  ‘Of course.’ She could hear the strain in his voice, he was lying in a new way, he was lying in a way he had never lied before, as someone who believed in sin. ‘There still might be.’

  His trip to Africa loomed before her like a bare hill. He had been in agony for so long with his writing that she had tolerated this venture into religious territory if it was to provide him with a creative breakthrough. The thought that it might not lead to the novel he had proposed, that the novel might never have been in his mind, that this whole episode had been, from the start, a quest for some sort of spiritual fulfilment, gave her a feeling of having been betrayed. Yet there seemed no object she could fix her anger upon. She longed more than ever for the scarlet woman, someone she could scream at. But there was only God.

  Polly thought – people (apart from my birth family) think I am a strong person, they think I am brave for setting up my own business, for learning how to make paper and how to sell it. They see me as someone to be admired, as someone feisty and indefatigable. But they don’t know what I’m feeling, and when Arnold told me he was going to Africa it was almost as though he had told me he was going to heaven. That he was going to die. I can’t live with this man, she thought. Now that he believes in eternal life he exists in another place.

  Then there was the terror that was to come, according to her sister-in-law, when Arnold would eventually turn his thoughts towards saving her. She didn’t want to be saved. More than anything she didn’t want to be saved. I don’t want to go to heaven. If she could put her opposition to religion into a single sentence, that was it.

  She needed someone she could talk to about these feelings. She wondered if she should go back to Holly, yet she dreaded it, because Holly represented the failure of this kind of relationship, the living proof that a Christian and an atheist cannot live together. Yet there must be some who do, successfully.

  She became aware of churches – as buildings – as if for the first time. As if they had suddenly appeared in her neighbourhood, had sprung up like mushrooms overnight. Recent events had made them visible to her in a way they hadn’t been before. Everywhere she went she saw them, some ancient, some new, most of them in between. If she walked past one she found herself slowing down, lingering outside, reading the posters and notices on the boards, as if they could provide any answers. She wondered if she should venture in, see if she could find anyone to talk to, but the churches were locked and showed little sign that anyone ever came and went.

  She decided to see Vera. In the months since their
friendship had faded, she realized she had missed her. It was not that they had ever talked in a deeply personal way about anything, but rather they seemed kindred spirits, despite their different outlooks. In her absence a space had opened up in Polly’s life that could only be filled by the one who had caused it, Vera. She was proof that she could talk to and be friends with a Christian. Perhaps, therefore, she could also be married to one. And if there was anyone she would feel comfortable talking about religion with, it was Vera. And now, with the prospect of Arnold leaving her not only spiritually but physically, going away somewhere that she couldn’t follow, she thought of Vera as the only one who could offer her advice.

  So she went to Vera’s unannounced. Walking up the little path to her door she felt a sudden nostalgia for the familiarity of the house, so similar to her own. She began crying, and wondered about turning back, but she had already rung the bell. When Vera opened the door, Polly could hardly see her through the warp of her own tears. And what must Vera have thought, to find tearful Polly on her doorstep, saying, ‘I need to talk to you about Arnold.’

  Wordlessly she had invited her into the house, though Polly noticed a cautiousness in her manner. If it had been the other way round, Polly would have offered Vera comfort even before asking what the problem was, she would have given her a hug, a cup of tea, tissues. But instead, Vera simply placed Polly in the centre of the room where she had to deal with her own tears, while Vera stood before her, her arms folded.

  ‘What has Arnold told you?’

  And Polly had replied, ‘Everything. He’s confessed.’

  A long silence, and then Polly noticed that Vera too was crying. It seemed so odd. It was she, Polly, who was the unhappy one in this scenario. What on earth had happened to Vera?

  ‘I’m so sorry, Polly. I’m so sorry. I hope you will forgive me.’

  ‘Forgive you?’

  ‘I never wanted to hurt you. It wasn’t even that I was unhappy with Angus. Don’t blame Arnold. He’s sweet. He still loves you deeply. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I hope I can make myself worthy of it. I didn’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. Something had taken me over.’

  Polly had found a tissue and was holding it to her eyes while Vera was speaking, and had only been listening with half her attention, waiting for her to begin making sense. In the silence that followed she realized she had it. All of it. The whole sense.

  Suddenly in command of her voice again, she spoke. ‘What are you saying to me, Vera?’

  That was how it came out. A misunderstanding. A simple misunderstanding. Vera had thought she was talking about something else, and in so doing, had apologized for something Polly had never imagined. The news so wrong-footed her that the tears she had been shedding since her arrival dried instantly. It was as though she drank the emotional outpouring back into her body. As though she was resetting herself. She felt her most urgent task now was to concentrate all her attention to the words that were coming from Vera’s mouth.

  ‘We lost control,’ she said. ‘It was like a madness. Only that doesn’t excuse us, because we always had the power to stop it. Arnold was always frightened by what we were doing, because he didn’t want to lose you.’

  ‘How long?’ said Polly, astounded by her own self-control.

  ‘Since early spring. And then we ended it in July, just before the summer holidays.’

  ‘Why?’

  Vera seemed to have trouble answering this question. She made several attempts, but came to a halt each time, then she cried again. ‘Shall we sit down?’ she said, when she had recovered a little. They were still standing in the centre of the room, facing each other.

  ‘I don’t want to sit down,’ said Polly. But Vera had already taken a seat at the table.

  Polly took a moment to look at Vera’s face, suddenly seeing it as Arnold must have seen it, and a thread of recent memories suddenly lit up in her mind, connecting together the moments Arnold had mentioned Vera over the past few months, the times he had casually dropped her into the conversation, the looks she had seen pass between them when they were in proximity. How had she failed to notice them, when now they were towering landmarks in her memory? For a moment long-suppressed schoolday thoughts came back to her, of older girls, beautiful and contemptuous, the frailty of her school-self, of everyone but her knowing things.

  Vera, recomposed, spoke again.

  ‘We aren’t made for having affairs, Polly. Arnold even less so than me. We didn’t know what to do about what we were doing.’

  ‘But you still did it.’

  ‘It was as though we didn’t know how to stop. We didn’t know the language.’

  ‘The language is very simple.’

  So she had the scarlet woman, she had her right in front of her, to scream at, to scratch at. She had always imagined that she would fight in a situation like this. That she would raise hell, be violent, vocal. She always believed she had it in her power to do those things, but now, in the curdled reality that had accreted around her, she felt frightened, more than anything. Frightened for herself, that she was in danger of losing the thing she most treasured about herself, that pearl of pure, trusting innocence that had somehow survived all these years.

  ‘We couldn’t be our proper selves with each other, because we realized that out proper selves were with our families. We realized the most important thing was to protect our marriages. That is why Angus and I encouraged Arnold to come to our church. We felt it would give him the strength to tell you what he had done.’

  Other paths in her memory lit up. This woman had been behind everything that had been happening in her family for months. The lonely Sunday mornings, the distracted presence at the dinner table. And she had thought he was worrying about his writing.

  ‘So, not content with stealing my husband’s body, you are now trying to steal his soul.’

  ‘I’m trying to save his soul . . . and yours . . .’

  She had had enough.

  ‘You must never, ever come anywhere near me again.’ She said it quietly, but with thundering emphasis. Her instinct was to scream the words but she had to remain dignified. She let the words hang in the silence for a few moments, during which she saw Vera’s face, wet and puffy, looking at her with a loose, bewildered expression. Then she repeated the words, this time pointing a finger at the seated woman. ‘You must never, ever come anywhere near me again.’

  And she left the house.

  Her eyes were so full of tears that she had trouble finding her car. She wiped them away angrily, feeling betrayed by her own body, that it should express feelings she thought were under control. Anger was what she wanted to feel, not sadness. She was worried that someone on the street might see her drenched face and take pity on her. She didn’t want to be pitied. She wanted to be furious. She wanted to be a giant.

  In the car she took some time to compose herself. Deep breaths. Checking her eyes in the mirror. The tears had stopped, but their traces remained, like washed-out riverbank grass after a flood. Her mind was having trouble catching up with her body, which seemed to have reacted in its own way to the revelation. She had to keep reliving moments from her recent past to see if there were clues that she should have noticed, but had missed. She suddenly remembered the school run, and Arnold’s sudden eagerness to undertake that particular chore. That must have been when it started. All those months ago. It was like history being rewritten. Every action, every word he’d spoken in all those months had been carefully chosen to conceal what was really happening. Now she knew, she had to relive those months again in her mind as they really were, with Arnold coming and going from wherever he’d been, hiding the traces, covering up the facts. The cleverness of his lying, the skill of his subterfuge. It made her feel physically sick. And then the anger came again, engulfing her. Then the tears. Then the anger at the tears.

  It was half an hour or more before she felt stable enough to start the car. She didn’t know where to go or what to do. She didn�
�t want to go home. She had taken time away from the shop to visit Vera, and so she went there. As she drove she felt her old self recovering, taking charge. She hadn’t realized before quite what a sanctuary Papyrus had become. Had she gone home she would have been in uncontrollable fits of sorrow, but at Papyrus she felt composed and sane. She carried on with her work as though everything was fine, she chatted with Tamsin and Terri, aware that she was a different woman from the woman who had been in the shop a couple of hours ago, but she was able to pass herself off as normal. She wasn’t yet ready to confide anything, nor did she feel the need for support, not yet. There would be a time when she would cry on Terri’s shoulder, but not now. Now she had the shop to take care of. She had felt, on her way back from Vera’s house, suddenly concerned for the paper she had made. All those fragile leaves, thin and vulnerable. Blank sheets, nothing written on them. Unreadable. No one could take these and read them, as Vera had done Arnold. She wanted to be there to take care of them.

  In the evening, she could see that Arnold was oblivious to what she knew. She had given no sign, no clue. It amazed her, her own capacity for calm self-control. She cooked a normal meal. A home-made pizza. It was something they had nearly every week, on a Wednesday or Thursday. Of all their meals, it was probably the one they most enjoyed. It was the most fun. Evelyn loved her mother’s pizzas, the colourfulness of them, the slapdash extravagance of them, the way they could be eaten without a knife and fork in a fiesta of hand-to-mouth gobbling. Polly watched Evelyn and her father enjoying their slices, playing little games about who had chosen the best portion, whose mozzarella was the stretchiest. All through the meal she maintained her composure, she had managed to lock down her rage, and had built up reserves of strength to see her through whatever was to follow.

  After dinner the evening dragged on. Still he had noticed nothing different or odd in her mood. She felt as though she was in some terrible endurance contest, like in one of those ghastly TV shows Arnold enjoyed, where famous people are buried alive with rats. She sang songs quietly to herself, went about her business of clearing up and tidying away, found things to occupy herself. And then, when finally Arnold went upstairs to read to Evelyn, she got the suitcase she’d earlier packed, down from the bedroom, and awaited Arnold’s return to the living room.