‘He’s very well, thank you.’ If I knew anything for sure it was that I should not reveal that we were in the midst of splitting up. ‘Really been getting into his biking now the weather’s better.’
‘I’ve seen him shooting down the hill a couple of times,’ Nina said, which surprised me as I did not know she had met him. Perhaps they’d been introduced the night of the Christmas party. ‘You know a cyclist was knocked down last week, just outside Sylvie’s house?’
‘I didn’t know, no. That’s awful. I hope he wasn’t badly injured?’ I looked towards Sylvie, whose loathing, or so I imagined, had until then prevented her from speaking directly to me.
‘No,’ she said at last. ‘A broken wrist.’
‘Unfortunately Arthur wasn’t at home to assist,’ Nina added, ‘but the medics were there in a couple of minutes.’
‘They’re based at the hospital, maybe,’ I said stupidly, anxious to avoid further mention of Arthur’s name or any reference to our little gathering outside the hotel.
‘How long have you been together?’ Nina asked me, and a jolt of shock made me widen my eyes and draw breath. I knew she had noticed this reaction, but it was too late to do anything about it. She had meant Matt, of course, not Arthur.
‘Er, nearly five years.’
‘Any wedding bells in the offing?’
I was able to laugh at this suggestion quite genuinely, and doing so relaxed me a little. ‘No. Matt’s not the wedding-bells kind.’
‘Are you?’
I hesitated. There was no longer any way of avoiding the fact that this was an inquisition and yet there was nothing to be gained by reacting defensively. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I’m like every other woman, I think it would be nice to get married one day.’ To avoid tumbling into the trap of discussing the ‘right man’ for me, I steered the discussion towards a different cliché: ‘I’d like to choose the dress, plan how it all looked, that would be fun…’ I ran out of words, suspecting that any could be dangerous in this context.
At the mention of clothing, they all looked me over, a disarming experience that made me feel like a carton of eggs getting its sell-by date examined. With their eyes dipped, their faces were momentarily free for me to check: Sarah’s was disagreeable, bordering on hostile, Nina’s cocked in superior amusement, Sylvie’s… Sylvie’s was, inevitably, the most unsettling. She looked defeated, a wife already in mourning.
She knows, I thought.
Nina touched the sleeve of my cardigan, a sage-green shrug with a feathery fake-fur collar. ‘Yes, you obviously do the whole vintage thing, don’t you? I like the Lauren Bacall hair, the retro make-up. Old Hollywood: it suits you, you’ve got the right figure for it. If only more girls did the same, rather than starving themselves half to death in pursuit of an ideal that will one day be considered grotesque.’ But just as I hoped she’d been diverted by more political concerns, she zoomed back to me. ‘Yes, you’re quite a catch, aren’t you, Emily Marr? I do hope Matt appreciates what he’s got.’
I felt uncomfortable to hear this last comment, and stated so baldly, as a judgement rather than a compliment. There was also the clear inference that I’d been previously discussed and that the experience of me in the flesh was merely confirming an opinion formed earlier. ‘I just prefer old clothes,’ I said, blandly. ‘I love the fabrics and the colours. And they’re much cheaper than new ones.’
Nina mused, ‘Vintage clothing is a very feminine nostalgia, I think. Do you find that men like it, Emily? What is it they sometimes call it? Not second-hand, no one says that any more, do they? Pre-loved, that’s it.’
I was far too stricken by the implications of her remarks to allow images of Arthur into my mind, his unreserved approval of the silk blouses and pencil skirts, the stockings and suspenders, every detail designed for his pleasure. Even the perfume I wore when we were together was a vintage blend: he’d recently given me a beautiful old flask of it. I was glad I was not wearing it now, but saved it for him. ‘Some must do, I suppose. But I’m not sure Matt’s interested in anything except cycling Lycra.’
Nina laughed, seconded by Sarah. I liked to think I had scored a point for this little attempt at humour, and since it was probably the only one I would score, I got to my feet to leave. ‘Talking of whom, I ought to get back if you don’t need me any more. I’ve got an early start tomorrow. We’ve got three birthday parties in so it’ll be a long day.’
‘My God, that will be half the kids in the area,’ Sarah said.
‘Good to know our children are safe in your hands,’ Nina added.
‘I hope so,’ I agreed, with as much dignity as I could muster. ‘Thank you very much for the wine, Sarah.’
She followed me to the door and handed me the cash I’d earned. ‘Thank you, Emily, I really appreciate your coming to my rescue like this.’ Her glee was barely contained, her feet already pivoting from the door as she closed it, ready to dash back down to her debrief.
If I’d been offered the superpower of invisibility and been able to follow her back to the kitchen table and hear everything they said about me, I would not have taken it.
I told Arthur about the encounter when we met a few days later at the hotel. Until then, I had been in a paralysis of anxiety and couldn’t begin to communicate by text what had happened.
‘Hmm,’ he said, listening without interruption, as was his habit. ‘That is worrying. We need a new meeting place, somewhere less local. I’ll have a think. Your flat is going to be out of the question now as well, if Sarah’s on the case. That’s a shame.’
‘To put it mildly!’ I cried, but as usual no evidence of concern disturbed the glacier of his face. It stood to reason that he would be experienced in containing a crisis, or in not letting a situation get critical in the first place, but I was not. Having turned over the episode repeatedly and even lost sleep over it, I was livid with fear and melodrama. That detail about a cyclist being run over replayed itself as a sinister threat; and the sly way Nina had said ‘pre-loved’, all that had been missing was a raised eyebrow in Sylvie’s direction. Good to know our children are safe in your hands… Was not the unspoken second part of that clause, if not our husbands?
But how could they know? A coincidental meeting of neighbours outside a local hotel: that was all they had. Whichever, if any, enquiries Sarah might have made at reception afterwards, surely no staff member would have divulged the details of a confidential booking. Meanwhile, Arthur deleted all texts and call logs religiously and so could not have left clues that way; in any case, he had separate mobile phones for his family and work and I contacted him on the work one. There could be no calamitous mix-up of contacts. No, the answer was they couldn’t possibly know. I was in the grip of paranoia and it was making my thoughts wild, reckless.
‘I understand if you’d rather just dump me,’ I told him bleakly. ‘I’ll kill myself, but I’ll understand.’
He looked at me with that perfect earnestness of his. ‘Tell me you don’t mean that, darling?’ He made an attempt at unbuttoning my top – normally we’d be undressed and in bed by now – but I captured his fingers in mine, pressing them to my sternum.
‘Feel my heartbeat, Arthur, it’s out of control. I feel hunted, and no wonder! It’s not as if I’m not guilty, is it? Everything they suspect is true!’
‘You just need to hold your nerve. They’re messing with you, believe me.’ Keeping his hand on my chest, he leaned forward and kissed my throat, moving once again in the direction of the exposed groove of cleavage, the first button of my top. I eased his head back up. I needed him to look at me, to acknowledge the catastrophe, to be the one I could count on to believe me.
He did not fail me. He stopped trying to kiss me and pulled me back to sit next to him on the covers, the pillows stacked behind our backs. He wore his gentle, willing face, the one I imagined he needed for more fearful patients, the ones who asked the same questions over and over. ‘OK, let’s talk about this properly. Did Sylvie say anyt
hing to you herself?’
‘No. She hardly looked at me. It was all Nina. Everything she said seemed to have some other significant meaning.’
‘Yes, it would. Don’t forget she’s a professional, she’s been on the Today programme and Question Time and God knows what else. Of course she’s going to get the better of you, that’s her job. It’s a confidence trick, a bluff. I know it’s scary, but it’s a trick all the same.’
I gazed at him. When he spoke like this, as an unquestioned equal to Nina and her ruling ilk, I saw how out of my league I was. Without his protection, I was the easiest of prey.
‘I promise you she doesn’t know anything, not for sure. If Sylvie had a shred of evidence, she would have accused me by now. You mustn’t worry about this, my love. This is for me to handle, and I will. Please trust me, all right?’
‘All right.’ And his words did reassure me. His sureness about Sylvie and the likelihood of her confronting him had to be based on experience as well as instinct. But my exposure to his wife’s circle had raised other questions, ones I could not help voicing. ‘So have you ever had an affair with one of them?’
‘One of whom?’
‘The coven. Nina and that lot.’
Arthur laughed. ‘No, of course not. I’d be ritually castrated if I so much as tried. They have their code of honour, that gang. It’s quite admirable, really.’
‘But you don’t?’
‘What, have a code of honour?’ He furrowed his brow, as if he’d never been asked such a searching personal question before. ‘I’ve never thought of it like that.’
‘But how could you not? It’s obviously wrong to be unfaithful to your wife. You said she’s been upset in the past, she gave you that warning? You must have thought about it then?’
This, of course, was the central contradiction of my situation, the one that presumably vexed mistresses the world over and that I’d previously avoided contemplating in any depth: how could a man be the beautiful soul his lover believed him to be when he was capable of such wilful unkindness to the mother of his children? That instinctive reaction to Sylvie I’d had, to pity some unnamed weakness in her: it was all too convenient to believe Arthur had ceased to find her attractive because of the same failing, and yet might it not be the case that the weakness had developed because of his neglect?
In which case, he was a monster and I was a fool.
Sensing that his job of placating me was not yet done, he answered me only after obvious thought. ‘I did think about it, yes, which is why I ignored all temptations in the two years before I met you. But I also knew that that final warning of hers was less to do with her wanting me to be faithful for moral reasons as to do with appearances, public image.’
‘You mean the socialising you have to do for work?’ I imagined him moving in exalted circles, dining with Charles and Camilla or the Saudi prince he told me he’d treated years ago. I imagined black-tie charity fundraisers and lavish parties at their home, taxis and chauffeur-driven cars queuing up the Grove to deliver their distinguished cargo.
‘No, we don’t do that much social stuff any more, only the occasional thing we really can’t refuse. Or I’ll go to events alone.’
‘Why?’
‘Sylvie wanted to cut back on it.’
‘I don’t understand.’ It seemed to me that Sylvie would benefit from consolidating this role. Wouldn’t a wife under threat seek more ways to become indispensable?
‘Emily, there’s no reason why you should understand. The fact that you’re not jaded and broken like we are is the reason I love you.’ As usual, I never tired of hearing him say this, or of feeling the sudden listing sensation of submission that it elicited. ‘You just have to take my word for it that when you’ve been married to someone for twenty years, you become very pragmatic. You can’t stay idealistic about someone for that length of time. It’s a natural adjustment.’
But pragmatism, or the fading of idealism, did not quite explain the desolation in Sylvie’s eyes at Sarah’s table, or the first impression I’d had in the café that time, which had left me with the idea that she had survived a traumatic ordeal and dreaded its return. It was deeper than an aversion to humiliation or loss of public face: she did want him to want her still, I was sure of it. I did not think Arthur was lying to me, however. I assumed that his marriage, rather like my relationship with Matt, had not included enough frank communication, which meant that his interpretation of their respective positions was different from hers. What he imagined to be a blind eye might in fact be a sobbing one.
‘Look, I can hardly deny I’ve been a terrible husband,’ he continued. ‘You know that. There’ve been plenty of times when I’ve hated myself for what I’ve done, for the excuses I’ve made to her and to myself. But I’m not sorry I met you. Do you want me to be sorry, is that it?’
‘No,’ I whispered, ‘I want you to be glad.’
‘Good. I am glad. Because I feel like I’m starting again with you, trying to do right all the things I did wrong before. I know there’s a short overlapping and I wish it weren’t this way, but that’s all it is, a short overlapping.’ He slid down the pillows a little, pulling me with him. ‘Alex does his A-levels this term; I can’t think about causing any drama until they’re over, but once they are…’
Even without prior experience, I knew this was the classic married man’s deferral; there would always be another reason to postpone. If we waited for the younger son to finish his A-levels it would be another year, and by then Arthur might have decided he couldn’t jeopardise their first terms at university, their finals, the early months in their chosen careers… How easy it would be to fall into the brooding silences and secret ultimatums of the long-term mistress. What made me different from all the women before me who’d hoped and believed and come to wish they had not?
I didn’t say any of this aloud, however. I’d already taken up half our time together today with my fears and insecurities and I didn’t want to turn our liaisons into anything other than ones to be anticipated with relish. Not when desire was what linked us in the first place.
But Arthur had an intelligence that enabled him to track my emotions. He held me closer, saying, ‘It will happen, I promise, very soon. I can’t leave her right this minute, but until I can I want to support you in other ways.’
‘I don’t want your money,’ I said, meaning it. Sylvie was not the only one with pride to protect.
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘What then? How can you “support” me?’
‘However you need me, you tell me. Let me come with you to visit your father. I know you feel lousy afterwards, whatever you pretend. Well, let me be there for you, as proof.’
‘Proof of what?’
‘Proof that I love you. More than any other woman, ever.’
We rubbed our faces together. Now when his fingers unbuttoned my top, unclasped my bra, I had no power to stop them. Now when he kissed me, I responded hungrily. ‘I’ve never wanted anyone like this,’ he groaned. ‘I’ve never loved anyone like this… It’s… it’s beyond my ability to describe…’
‘I feel the same.’ And out of vanity, or for pleasure, I made him wait, made him repeat his vows. ‘Did you tell any of the others you loved them more than any other woman?’
‘Oh, Emily, you make it sound as if there’ve been whole chorus lines of them. And no, I didn’t.’
‘Only me?’
‘Only you.’
He was true to his word and came with me to visit my father the following Sunday. Someone or something had been cancelled to facilitate this, but I did not allow myself to think about that.
Arriving at the ward, I thought how cautious I would have been of making this introduction had Dad’s disease been less advanced. Back when he had been himself I would not have allowed them to meet at all, and a part of me was grateful for the convenience of his lack of comprehension. The only father in the world not likely to disapprove of his daughter’s married lover!
How ashamed I was of that perverse gratitude – hadn’t I spent years praying for a miracle? I could have wept for him, for everything he’d once known and now did not.
He’d been given a sedative to help him sleep and could not lift his head from the pillow. Arthur, seated beside me, did instinctively what Phil and I had had to be educated to do: use body language to convey warmth. He knew not to bother with words. When Dad drifted into sleep, his hand remained clutched around mine and we stayed a while. Arthur took my other hand and I felt the flooding gladness of total trust in someone, a friend to whom I could reveal the full enormity of my sorrow. He wouldn’t make light of it or avoid discussion of it as Matt had. He wouldn’t listen in open horror as Charlotte did, exclaiming constantly that she didn’t know how she would cope if it were her beloved father and not mine.
In a low voice, I told him about the diagram of a pyramid Phil and I had been given by the specialist when the disease was first diagnosed.
‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,’ he said at once. ‘At the bottom the physiological needs, the basic ones, at the top the transcendent ones.’
The Disappearance of Emily Marr Page 16
