Fictional Lives

by Hugh Fleetwood

  A month later Lucie came to New York, and phoned Fran; who invited her to lunch, and went with her to the ballet. (‘Don’t ask me,’ Gerhard said. ‘I find it hard enough to enjoy ballet at the best of times. If I had to sit next to that spoiled little bitch I’d probably go mad.’)

  Four months later, when Lucie came again to New York (partly for business, and partly to see an ex-husband she was fond of), she stayed, at Fran’s insistence, and against Gerhard’s wishes, at the penthouse on Park Avenue.

  Three months later, she came again.

  And it was on the seventh day of this second stay, one evening when Cyrus had gone to Connecticut with his grandparents, during a party in honour of some visiting South American novelist, that Fran, almost by accident (she hadn’t noticed that they were missing, and had gone to Lucie’s room to fetch something), found her husband making love with her guest.

  She would have assumed, if she’d ever thought about it, that she would behave with perfect calm in such a situation. But maybe because she hadn’t ever thought about it, she did something which shocked her more than the actual discovery. She lost her head, and had hysterics. She started screaming. She rushed over to the bed and started punching and pummelling the naked bodies lying there, wanting to tear out those eyes that were staring at her. (Gerhard staring with fear; Lucie with delighted triumph.) She spat, she pushed, she cried, she scratched. She fought off Gerhard’s attempts to hold her, and she shrieked ‘I don’t give a damn,’ when he told her that all her guests must be listening to her. (Whether they were or not she never knew, but she doubted it; Lucie’s room was a long way from the living room, and everyone there was making a great deal of noise.) And finally she ordered Lucie out of the house. ‘Now, this minute. If you’re not gone in five minutes I’ll kill you.’

  Later that night Gerhard told her that Lucie had been trying to get him into bed ever since she’d arrived; that her hysteria had been unnecessary and ridiculous—‘I never could stand her and I still can’t; I was just drunk and if you hadn’t found us I would have forgotten I’d done it tomorrow’—and that in any case Fran’s insistence that Lucie stay with them had been a kind of challenge to him. She had so pointedly ignored his own views on the subject that he had felt she was testing him. And he didn’t like or approve of tests.

  He had done, he shouted, no more than she had wanted him to do….

  Which might, Fran told herself a few days after, be true. Or at least have an element of truth in it. Which in turn—together with the fact that she had exposed, with her reaction, a corner of her character she hadn’t known existed, couldn’t, for all her much-vaunted self-knowledge, account for, and was, in any case, bitterly ashamed of (to behave like that just because two people are making love!)—would explain why she wasn’t able to forgive Lucie Schmidt or Gerhard (or, if it came to it, herself), and why she had forbidden Gerhard ever to see ‘that whore’ again. Forbidden him despite her realization that by so doing she was ensuring he would. For Gerhard didn’t like being forbidden to do things any more than he liked being tested.

  How often he saw her she didn’t know, though she did her best to find out; even contemplating having an investigator follow him. It wasn’t very often, she suspected—Lucie was based in Paris—but it was often enough for the wound to be kept open, and aching; and for her hatred of the woman to become an obsession. She would dream of Lucie Schmidt; she would spend hours willing Lucie Schmidt to be killed in a car crash, or a plane crash, or to have something fall on her head as she walked by a construction site; and she would spend longer hours discussing first with friends, and then with anyone who would listen, how she could prevent her husband from seeing Lucie Schmidt again.

  Which made, of course, matters worse. For not only did nothing that was said help her, but the very parading round town of the affair enraged Gerhard; and made him all the more determined to continue it.

  (Some people told Fran she should be calm, forget the whole business, and stop making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Others told her she should see a psychiatrist, who would help her to come to terms with her rage. And others still told her she should leave, or threaten to leave, Gerhard. All of which advice was worthless because ‘the business’ was a mountain; because she had always been proud of her ability to come to terms with herself by herself, and she didn’t want to lose her pride, which was her ultimate defence against all the possible hurts of this world; and because—this above all—she had no real reason to leave Gerhard.)

  Finally, however, and perhaps inevitably, time came to her assistance. Her husband was having an intermittent relationship with a Frenchwoman. It was as simple as that. She didn’t like it, but couldn’t do a thing about it; and after it had been going on for two years she no longer had the energy to dwell constantly on the wretched fact. Her obsession didn’t vanish; but she did manage to put it into storage, and keep it mainly out of sight.

  And out of sight it had remained, more or less, until three months ago. Until, that is, Fran had noticed—and remarked upon the fact—that Gerhard was drinking more than normal; and until she had heard first, through friends of friends, that Lucie Schmidt was back in town, and then that she was planning to stay for a while.

  Yet though, when she did hear it, her obsession once more loomed up before her, at least this time Fran was able to prevent its shadow from falling on her face; and at least this time, apart from a couple of fights with Gerhard (both occasioned by her not finding him at the office when she had phoned him there) she didn’t allow it to interfere with her daily life too much. Three years ago she had been forever cancelling parties and dinners and meetings…. What was more, since she not only still loved her husband, but also still didn’t regret having married him—which, she reflected now, as she finished dressing for the ballet, was another reason why she continued to support him—she tried not to push him further into a corner, and stopped herself from going around telling everyone of this latest development. In fact she only told one person.

  That person was David Chezzel.

  *

  Partly because she realized she had a share of the blame, Fran hardly thought, over the next few weeks, of the book that David claimed to be writing. Though she did have other reasons as well. One was that the story the man had outlined was not of a kind that interested her; she was not a fan of the murder mystery, whatever form it took. And another was that Gerhard, from the evening of the ballet onwards, had become so attentive and kind to her, seemed so eager to apologize for the wrongs he had done her over the last four years, and was so willing to do whatever she wanted—unprecedently he accompanied her to London for a week, to attend a poetry festival—that she began to hope that Lucie Schmidt was a thing of the past. Indeed, her husband was with her so much of the time—he almost stopped drinking, never phoned to say he was going to be tied up, and didn’t have a single attack of amnesia—that she didn’t see when, even if he’d wanted to, he could have met his French mistress.

  (She made herself stop calling him at the office; and after she had stopped, he started to call her. Sometimes twice a day….)

  And probably she wouldn’t have thought again about that book—at any rate not until it was finished, and she read it; but then she would have been able to think about it, and judge it, on purely literary grounds—if, two months after she had been told the story, she hadn’t, very faintly at first, and then more persistently—started to suffer from pains in the stomach.

  Even so it took her almost a week to admit to herself that she was thinking about it; and to admit that she was wondering whether Gerhard was poisoning her….

  *

  She had never, she thought, as she left her doctor—he couldn’t discover what was wrong—been so angry with herself in her life. Here she was, Fran Niebauer, suspecting her husband of trying to murder her. It was pitiful. I am a forty-six-year-old woman living in New York City, she told herself, who is fortunate enough to have a wonderful son, a husband whom she loves, a great ma
ny friends, abundant money, and a life that is interesting and enjoyable. And I am wondering whether I am being poisoned! It was preposterous; and she had been right, she added, to despise murder mysteries. Oh sure—it was perfectly possible that she would be killed in an accident, or might suddenly have a stroke or develop cancer—it was even possible that she would be attacked by a madman in the street. These things she was prepared to accept as the normal risks of day to day living. But she was not prepared to accept the idea that her husband, whatever he thought of her, was tipping little powders into her food, or into her wine, or—or—she didn’t know. She didn’t have any imagination, and she was thankful for it. All she did know was that she was a civilized human being, married to another civilized human being, and that as far as she was concerned civilized human beings did not go round killing one another. If Gerhard wanted to leave her he would, once he had taken his decision, tell her, and then proceed to do so. She would be upset naturally—more than upset; she would be bitterly unhappy—but she would accommodate her unhappiness just as she had accommodated her unattractiveness, and she would go on living. She did love her husband, and she hoped he would always be with her—but he was not the be all and end all of her life. Apart from anything else, she thought—staring the absurdity in the face—he had no reason to wish her dead. All right, she did support him in a life-style he couldn’t have afforded without her; but on the other hand he also earned plenty himself, in the fashion importing business she had set him up in. He could have lived on that, even with Lucie Schmidt, in more than adequate comfort.

  And really to clinch the matter, even if, for some inconceivable reason, Gerhard did want to kill her, he could hardly have done so now; not after she had told him the story of David Chezzel’s book. Because not only would she know what he was doing, but, when the book was published, the whole world would know what he had done. After all, it would be pretty obvious….

  She was so angry with herself that instead of walking home from the doctor’s, as she would normally have done on such a warm, sunny April morning, she took a taxi. And then, which was still less normal, as she was paying the driver, she changed her mind; and told the man that she wanted to go to the West Side. She gave him David’s address.

  She never called on people unannounced; it wasn’t fair, or civilized. She also had never disturbed any of her writers in residence—not even with a phone-call—during the day; or during the night, if they told her that that was when they worked. Today however was an exceptional day; and since David had so disturbed her, she felt she had an excuse for her behaviour. What she was going to say when she saw him—if he were in, and if he answered the door—she wasn’t sure of. All she was sure of was that she wanted to speak to him; and, possibly, to see if he wouldn’t replace the genie that he was in the process of conjuring up back into its bottle. Or to see, if he himself were the genie, whether she couldn’t in some way persuade him to return to captivity.

  Once again—and it came to her with another attack of her stomach cramps—the idea of threatening the writer with eviction entered her head. Once again, and for the same reasons as before, she rejected it. But she did so with less conviction than before. After all, she thought, if—But then she stopped. There were no ifs. She was not being poisoned. And she was being incredibly stupid….

  She didn’t, however, change her mind a second time as regards her destination.

  David was in; and he answered the door. He also assured her he wasn’t working—he had done his four hours for the day—and offered her a drink. Which she accepted.

  When she was sitting, glass in hand, looking at the author, she realized he was looking at her; wanting an explanation for her visit.

  She had thought, coming up in the elevator, that she would start by being perfectly straightforward; telling David that she had been hurt by the story he had told, and now, absurdly, had got the notion that Gerhard was trying to poison her. And she was about to do it. But all at once she hesitated. Which made her feel more angry with herself than ever. For God’s sake, she ordered herself, say what you have to say. But whether because she was suddenly too ashamed to reveal her stupidity, or whether because she suddenly felt that certain things were better not talked about, she couldn’t, when it came to it, do it.

  Instead she looked around the high-ceilinged, red-carpeted, well-proportioned living room, and murmured that David had made it look very nice, with the paintings he had put on the walls, and the plants he had placed all around. (She provided the furniture, and paid for the apartment to be painted every other year; decorations of whatever sort, and—as in this case—plants, she left to the discretion of her tenants.)

  Then she went on to remark that David himself was looking well. (Which she supposed he was; though to be honest she found his looks unpleasant. He wasn’t very tall, and while his face wasn’t ugly, there was something distasteful about it. His brown eyes were a little too sincere and frank. His thick black hair was a little too glossy. And his lips were a little too eager to break into a self-deprecating smile. He ranked, in fact, in her canine terminology, as a lap-dog; and lap-dogs disgusted her.

  Which made it all the more ironic that he should promise to be her first champion; whereas all those other rangy, fierce, spirited young things had turned out to be creatures of little or no worth; with empty barks, an unoriginal and undistinguished way of holding themselves, and no staying power.)

  Finally she said that she had been passing, had realized that it was quite a time since she had seen him—which was true; she hadn’t wanted to, and hadn’t invited him to any of her parties over the last two months—and had thought she would drop by to make sure everything was all right. No problems with the plumbing, with the neighbours, or anything like that….

  But then, since there were really no more topics available to her, and since David was still watching her, waiting for her to say what she had come to say, she could put it off no longer. And telling herself that it didn’t matter how foolish she sounded, and how even the unspeakable at times had to be spoken—she plunged.

  She delivered the speech she had prepared in the elevator; and David listened to her in silence. When she had finished he told her, as he had on the phone, and with the same self-righteous indignation, that she was being paranoid. This time, however, there was no laugh afterwards.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Fran,’ he said, ‘it’s just a book. Just a story.’

  He was small; but she was smaller. And he was looking down on her.

  ‘Maybe your telling me about Gerhard and his Frenchwoman gave me the idea, but how I develop that idea is nothing to do with Gerhard or you or any Frenchwoman. It’s to do with me. It sounds as if your pains are psychosomatic.’

  Fran wasn’t sure if she believed in psychosomatic pains; at least not for herself. If she did, she certainly didn’t approve of them.

  ‘David, I’m not an idiot. You know that.’

  The brown eyes were wide now; the mouth severe.

  ‘Yes, Fran, I do know that. Which is why I don’t really understand what you’re talking about. Do you think that Gerhard and I worked all this out together?’

  ‘No, of course not. I just thought—’ she shrugged. ‘Maybe, after I told Gerhard the story, he decided it was quite a good one.’ She shook her head. ‘No. That’s not true. I don’t believe it for a minute. And you’re right not to understand me. I’m being ridiculous. I guess I’m upset because Lucie is in New York, and presumably Gerhard is seeing her occasionally. That’s probably why I’ve got these cramps.’

  David relaxed slightly, and did allow himself a smile now. It was condescending.

  ‘Gerhard’s not about to leave you,’ he murmured. ‘Apart from your cash, I’m sure he likes you.’

  Fran would have liked to smile too. She couldn’t.

  ‘Yes, I think he does. What I don’t understand is what she gets out of it. Just sex?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never met her.’

  ‘What
about in the book. What are the motives of the “other woman” in that?’

  David paused, and Fran thought he wasn’t going to answer. But eventually, with a frown of irritation, he did.

  ‘She is a bored woman who doesn’t have enough brains to see why she’s bored, or enough energy to seek a genuine remedy for her boredom. So she travels as much as she can, and has the occasional affair, and persuades herself she is having fun. She isn’t really, she knows she isn’t, but—the married man in New York she is going with does, essentially, just represent sex to her. Or a little adventure. Something to do when she is in New York. She has no intention of getting seriously involved with him. He even bores her slightly. Until, that is, he proposes killing his wife. Then he becomes more interesting. The adventure promises to be more fun than she’d imagined. Of course she doesn’t want to have anything to do with the actual murder—she doesn’t like trouble—any more than she wants to marry the man if the plot succeeds. Once the deed is done the fun will be over; and she isn’t interested in the money the man will get from his wife. Though he of course doesn’t realize this.’

  Fran remembered Lucie saying, ‘I don’t give a damn about money. I was born poor and I’ll die poor. In between I’ll get by as best I can.’