And What Do You Do?

by Sarah Long

  What did you buy for your husband when returning from an adulterous love-fest in the East? A pirate Rolex? A jar of deep heat Tiger Balm? A silk suit, purchased in the fervour of the moment and destined never to be worn under grey European skies?

  Laura wandered through the enormous shopping mall of Bangkok airport feeling happier than she could remember. She was blissfully alone. Free to stare at the miniature Buddhas without Antoine holding forth on their cultural significance and explaining the difference between the Theravada and the Mahayana branches of Buddhism. The Theravada, he had said in the course of his monologue that morning, was the conservative branch: it meant ‘the way of the elders’. ‘Oh,’ she had said, ‘that must be for you then. I, on the other hand, would see myself more on the liberal Mahayana side.’

  He had got rather prickly and said that in view of the new life expectancy of 120, he was barely into early middle age. To which she had retorted that on that basis she had not even reached adolescence, which made him a child abuser.

  This conversation, the nearest they had come to an argument, had taken place after breakfast in their hotel bedroom. They had been packing their bags, getting ready to move on to Phuket for the full-on relaxation part of the holiday. Antoine had checked his watch: the flight wasn’t for another three hours. He felt he had time to go to the gym for a quick pound on the treadmill before they checked out.

  Laura had been relieved to have a few moments on her own. The prospect of two days and nights of non-stop Antoine Bouchard was making her feel weary. When he wasn’t giving practical demonstrations of the art of love, he would be stuffing her head with fragments from the vast compendium that was his Mind. Frankly it was getting to be a bit of a bore.

  It didn’t take her long to pack – her modest collection of toiletries was quickly returned to the toothpaste-stained sponge bag that was a fraction of the size of Antoine’s. She had toyed with the idea of helping herself to a bathrobe, but decided the Sukhothai logo would be too much of a giveaway in the marital bathroom, and anyway she wasn’t sure that she really wanted a memento of what was fast becoming in her eyes a shabby little escapade rather than a daring romantic adventure.

  After fastening the Mandarina Duck, she had laid back on the unmade bed and wondered who would be using it next. Perhaps a corpulent, sandy-haired businessman and his ill-matched beautiful Thai companion, like the couple she had seen coming into the bar last night: a fat, bulging Western wallet on legs, his freckled arm around the slim waist of a girl who sat politely smiling while he downed a last drink before leading her off to the final pleasure of the night. A business transaction; there was no shame. He wouldn’t dream of doing this back home in Woking – she knew it was Woking from his country club polo shirt – but in Bangkok it was part of the scene, along with the compulsory tour of the gilded wats and the shopping arcades.

  But then, who was she to judge? Why was she any better? She might not actually have been paid for her services, but she certainly wouldn’t be here unless Antoine was footing the bill. His suitcase stood ready by the foot of the bed, and on top of it was his male handbag – or document carrier if you wanted to be charitable. It was unzipped, and Laura could see his wallet lying inside. She looked at her watch – he would be at least another ten minutes. Plenty of time for her to have a satisfying little snoop.

  With a frisson of shame, she reached across and drew out the wallet. She fingered the aubergine leather – not a colour she would ever choose herself – and opened it carefully to inspect the contents: Thai and French banknotes neatly stacked behind a line of credit cards, a driving licence, a photo of Sylvie taken several decades ago, some business cards, taxi receipts. All rather disappointing, really. She stuck a finger into the pocket running behind the credit cards and brought out a tightly folded piece of paper, thin and yellow with age. She unfolded it on the bed, and saw it was a handwritten list, with numbers running down the left-hand side and girls’ names on the right. And there, right at the bottom, was Number 73: Laura.

  Which was why she had decided to make a run for it. Quickly, before he returned from the gym, she had written a brief note: ‘Sorry, got to go home. Thanks for everything. Number 73.’

  She had hurried down to the lobby where the doorman had helped her into a Mercedes taxi to take her to the international airport. On the way she had stared out of the window and tried to imagine Antoine’s rage when he returned from the gym to find her gone. She shouldn’t have left that note – he would realise she had been snooping through his wallet. She should have just made an excuse, pretended something had cropped up at home. Would he still go to Phuket without her? She guessed he probably would; the hotel was booked after all. And who could say? He might even bump into Number 74 round that black swimming pool.

  And now she was heading home. Laura de Saint Léger, the seventy-third person to have had the pleasure of Dr Antoine Bouchard, was handing over two jade elephants and a suspiciously cheap Quiksilver sports shirt to the girl in the airport shop. It could have been worse, thought Laura as she brought out her credit card. At least he hadn’t awarded marks out of ten on a personal score sheet or used a star system depending on what acts had been performed, which was something boys apparently often put in their diaries. And of course it had given her what she had been looking for – a pretext to escape from a weekend of illicit and unwanted sexual activity with a lover she no longer desired.

  As she fastened herself into the seat of the aeroplane, Laura prepared herself for the void of the flight ahead. Her feelings of euphoria and relief were waning as she started to think about the reality to which she was returning. Her two lovely boys – the very thought of them made her heart leap with joy. She could feel their small arms around her as she envisaged her homecoming. She would drop her suitcase in the hall and they would all be so happy it would make her realise it was worth the separation just for that moment of reunion.

  But then there would be Jean-Laurent waiting nervously in the background, unsure how she would greet him. Jean-Laurent, who had been occupying her thoughts so fully since she had been away. Being in Thailand had brought back memories of how things used to be between them, how much in love they had been. It was hard to believe that this was the same Jean-Laurent, her husband – who had been carefully deceiving her for so long, and who had now engineered a brand-new baby to bring suffering upon her.

  She had barely spoken to him since his revelation that Flavia was pregnant. He pretended he didn’t want the child, but she knew he would change his mind. She knew with a bitter twist in her heart because, if she was honest, he hadn’t exactly been over the moon when Laura first told him she was expecting a baby. He hadn’t exactly hung the flags out, had he? He never sank quite so low as to ask ‘who’s the father?’, but certainly there was shock, disbelief and a fair dose of panic before he came round to the idea.

  But when Charles-Edouard was born, no father could have been more ecstatic. She saw him now, tears streaming down his face as he held his son, awkwardly, like a delicate and precious object he was terrified of breaking. And two years later, when Pierre-Louis was handed to him by the midwife, she saw it again: the joy, the unfettered weeping as he took his baby boy in his arms, more confident this time, instinctively supporting the tiny dark head with his strong, tanned fingers.

  So why should it be any different this time? It might well be an unplanned pregnancy, but it was hardly the product of a one-night stand. It would be a beautiful baby girl, conceived in passion by people who made love to each other because they needed to, not because they happened to be married to each other. And this baby would be the stake that drove Jean-Laurent and Laura apart – there would be no avoiding that.

  What had she been thinking of, buying her husband a fake Quiksilver shirt? Did she really think the handing over of cheap airport souvenirs was going to win him back from the beautiful mother of his unborn child?

  Laura let herself into her apartment stealthily, like a burglar. She had telephoned
from the airport to say that she was back early, but the answering machine was on; clearly Jean-Laurent had taken the boys to the café for breakfast. She breathed in the familiar air of home and made a tour of the bedrooms. Their bed was unmade but with no sign of dual occupancy, which was a relief. Although when it came to it she would have been surprised if Jean-Laurent had stooped so low as to bring That Woman into the family home.

  The boys’ bedroom, with its litter of Lego and small discarded socks, made her hungry to hold them. She picked up Pierre-Louis’s Rupert pyjama top and smelt it – the perfume of his body was something she would like to bottle up and take with her were she ever to be abandoned on a desert island. An island paradise in Thailand, with onlyAntoine as a companion.

  She shuddered at the thought of her happy release. How much rather she would be here, in the dull, quiet chaos of her home than in a blue-skied nirvana with her lover. How exotic the ordinary became when you had been deprived of it for a short time.

  She went into the kitchen where two cereal bowls bore the hardening traces of Weetabix; they must have had breakfast at home after all. The coffee machine was still on and she drank the bitter-tasting remains of the jug as she flicked through the post. Elle magazine for her and, from England, the mini Boden catalogue of clothes for middle-class kids.

  There were the usual nauseating captions beneath the photos of Sloaney children: ‘Hugo, drummer,’ who looked more as though his future would lie in the stock market. ‘Helena, mummy’: that was a more likely prognosis. She had never – God forbid! – ordered anything from them, but the catalogues kept arriving with all the thick-skinned self-assurance of the upper middle classes that sooner or later she would crack for a pair of man-child cords and a sweater as photographed on the beach at Rock.

  Where had they gone? Would they be missing her? She hadn’t yet come up with her excuse for her early return from the fictional girls’ party in Barcelona – she would make it something emotive, something along the lines of not being able to stand the hysteria of all those women together. Though when it came to girly cosmetics, the contents of an entire hen party’s toilet bags couldn’t match up to Antoine’s bulging vanity case. Would they have gone to the park? Perhaps she could walk along and look for them.

  I’m rather like the protagonist of that Maupassant story, she thought as she stepped out into the crisp wintry sunshine. Or was it by Zola? The one where the man falls into a catatonic trance and is nailed into his coffin, attends his own funeral, and then miraculously digs his way out of the grave and goes back home. It doesn’t end well, though – he finds his wife being comforted by a handsome neighbour and realises he is no longer required, so wanders off into the world of the living dead.

  Would this be her fate? Would she find Jean-Laurent cuddling up to Flavia while the boys scampered around them in loving acceptance of their new mother? Laura would be relegated to the role of Birth Mother, a physical vessel who had served her purpose in bringing them into the world and now, like a used-up breeding cow, would be put out to grass. She would go on cultural tours of European cities with other discarded single women, while Jean-Laurent would take holidays at Club Med. He would lie next to Flavia on a sun-lounger and watch his three children joyfully ensconced in kids’ clubs under the care of gentils organisateurs. They would epitomise the happy functionality of the new, re-formed family.

  Over her bloody dead body they would. With a blinding flash, Laura suddenly realised that she was thinking like a defeatist. In a crushing attack of low self-esteem, she was casting herself as the betrayed, discarded wife, condemned to a life of tragic loneliness. But wait a minute. Who was just returning from a holiday with her secret lover? She was. Hardly the behaviour you’d expect from a doormat wifey. Who had prostated himself before her with grief and remorse, begging her to forgive him? Jean-Laurent. Did she still love him? Of course. And was she prepared to hand him on a plate to someone else? Absolutely not.

  By the time she reached the park, Laura had made up her mind. She was not going to lie down like a dog and let Flavia take away her husband. The idea was preposterous. Flavia, that jumped-up self-serving egomaniac claimed to be a research consultant. So let her research a solution to her impending single parenthood. There was no way she was going to break up Laura’s family.

  I am empowered, thought Laura, delighted that she could now count herself the embodiment of one of the leitmotifs of Jean-Laurent’s bullshitting business books. I have freed myself from jealousy and anxiety, and now I have a fixed purpose. She strode into the sandpit and saw Pierre-Louis standing at the top of the slide, snugly wrapped in his balaclava; Jean-Laurent was taking no chances against the weather. Then she saw her husband on the bench, smiling, his eyes feasting on his younger son. And it wasn’t Flavia sitting next to him, it was Charles-Edouard, head down, engrossed in his GameBoy. She paused, wanting to savour the moment, to remain a spectator of this tableau of family life. But Pierre-Louis had seen her.

  ‘Mummy!’

  He pointed at her, dramatically, from his vantage point.

  Jean-Laurent turned towards her. She saw him register surprise and then delight. He was glad she was there – he was getting up now, coming to greet her. How tall he was, how athletically he moved, how different from the carefully mannered gait of her erstwhile lover.

  ‘You’re back,’ he said as she folded into his embrace. ‘I’m so glad. Why are you back so early?’

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know, I just thought it would be more interesting to spend the weekend in the sandpit. I didn’t see why you should have all the fun.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me why you came back early.’

  Jean-Laurent was scraping the debris of fishfingers and rice into the swing-top bin. A few grains of rice missed their target and fell to the floor, joining the sprinkling of coffee grounds and miscellaneous smears that no one had bothered to clear up since Asa’s departure. I suppose I could get a cloth and clean that up, thought Laura, but I don’t think I will. She took a swig of her Chablis instead.

  ‘I told you. I was missing home too much. What are you making me for dinner?’

  ‘I thought I would be alone, so I just bought one steak.’

  ‘Bloke’s food.’

  ‘Which I was planning to prepare with a sauce aux échalotes and a simple rocket salad. With a bottle of St Joseph.’

  ‘French bloke’s food,’ laughed Laura. ‘If you were English, you’d be washing it down with a crate of lager and chips. Tell you what, let’s share the steak and get some cheese in and it will do perfectly for two.’

  ‘I have some Roquefort and some eighteen-month-old Comté. And we could start with foie gras.’

  He was so eager to please it could have been pitiful had she not been enjoying it so much. He had refused her offer to help, and made her lie down with a magazine while he saw to the boys’ tea. If only you knew, Laura had thought as she flicked through Elle, if only you knew that I have come hot from my lover’s bed, albeit carefully cleansed by the full panoply of the Sukhothai’s bathroom toiletries. She hugged her secret and rejoiced in his attempts to win her forgiveness. The anxious eyes, the hunger, the panic at the thought of what he stood to lose.

  He was washing the pans now, stooping over the sink, too tall for the woman-sized kitchen. She took in the length of his thighs, the firm curve of his buttocks in his loose jeans. His shirt had come untucked and she could see his smooth, summer-brown skin above the waistband of his underpants. She came up behind him and lowered her face to kiss it, this skin she loved, to drink in its indefinable smell. She felt him stiffen with surprise, and then desire, as she ran her hands under his shirt around his tummy, and up to his chest.

  ‘Laura . . .’

  He reached behind him and cupped her face with his hands, still soapy from the water, pressing her into the small of his back. He pushed his hands down further, found her breasts, turned round and seized her roughly, pulling up her T-shirt.

  ‘Do what you did
to her,’ whispered Laura.

  He was pushing her against the wall now, his hand between her legs, his strong thighs locked around her. They slid to the floor.

  This is madness, she thought, the boys could come in at any moment. But she couldn’t stop. They were sliding now on the greasy kitchen tiles, his mouth biting into her neck as they climaxed beside the open dishwasher.

  ‘You’re mine,’ she whispered into his ear as he crumpled into her. Sex was power and ownership and she now knew she was invincible.

  Later, when the steak and Roquefort had been despatched and the boys tucked up, Laura and Jean-Laurent held hands in the re-ignited marital bed and talked about the Enemy. Every relationship needed an enemy, thought Laura – there was nothing more conducive to complicity. And when the enemy was until very recently a rival to one partner and a lover to the other, the taste was even sweeter.

  ‘She’ll just have to manage on her own,’ said Laura. ‘After all, you weren’t consulted. She’s just a victim of her own lust and connivance.’

  She ran her free hand over her husband’s loins. ‘I can understand her wanting to have sex with you – who wouldn’t? But to trick you into fathering a child is the depths of deceit. She knew you were married.’

  She didn’t add the logical follow-on, that he knew he was married, too. Sexual satisfaction had made her generous, and anyway she had her own little secret in that department.

  Jean-Laurent was aware that he was being absolved beyond what he deserved, but thought it prudent to bolster his case while the hearing was sympathetic.

  ‘We never talked about a future together, believe me. She used to make hints, but I never encouraged her. She should have known I would never leave you.’