Virtual Strangers

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says into my hair. ‘I’m so, so, so sorry. What a mess.’

  ‘Yes.’ It comes out as a whisper. Not my voice at all. A small, desolate thing.

  He moves to look at me. Touches my face. ‘And you were right, of course. About it all ending in tears. Except -’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Except, Christ. Is that it?’ His eyes bore into mine then he’s up and off again, prowling around me, pulling on his boxers, donning the shirt that means next time I touch him, it won’t smell of him, feel of him - won’t be him any more. ‘I don’t know where we go now,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what we do.’

  I don’t either. Except I should do, but can hardly bear to give the thought credence.

  ‘I think I go home,’ I say, wrenching my clothes on. ‘And you go back to your conference, and then we make that effort I’ve been banging on about. You know, the one that involves not seeing one another. Not communicating with each other any more.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Don’t say that, Charlie. I don’t think I can.’

  ‘But you have to. You are married. And I,’ I am up now, ‘can’t live with this.’ I point to the phone which, its treachery done, now lies abandoned on the desktop, in the spotlight of the Tiffany lamp. ‘I can’t live with any of it. And neither can you.’

  We are facing each other across six inches of tasteful pastel carpet. He runs gentle fingers across my forehead and loops my hair behind my ears. Such a physical, intimate thing to be doing.

  ‘I can’t not, Charlie. Not now.’ He moves forward to kiss me.

  Instinctively, I find myself pulling away. ‘God, Adam. I told you! I can’t do this! It’s like she’s in the room with us now, for God’s sake. Isn’t it? Doesn’t it feel like that to you?’

  I step back, leaving him framed by the window, his beautiful broad shoulders sloped in defeat.

  ‘No! It isn’t! You’re here, I’m here. No one else is! Forget it, can’t you? Can’t you?’

  ‘No, I can’t. Not when you’ll be going back to her tomorrow! Not when you’ll be going home and slipping into bed beside her! You don’t have to deal with any of that stuff! Oh, you can concoct all your little fantasies about me. Imagine what I might be doing. Reinvent me as some sort of irresistible siren. Keep me chaste in your head. Whatever! There are no grim realities to deal with. No wonder you were so bloody keen to see Phil packed off! Well, from this end of the deal, it’s not quite so rosy, believe me.’

  He moves a step closer to me.

  ‘I don't sleep with her, Charlie.’

  ‘Oh, diddums! I wondered when we were going to get around to that old Chestnut. And do we get the next one? That pigs bloody fly.’

  ‘I don’t. We haven’t. Not for over a year now. We even have separate bedrooms, for God’s sake.’

  He looks as if he’d like me to pop round and confirm it. ‘Oh, please -’

  ‘Look, I’m not trying to justify anything, Charlie. Just stating a fact.’

  ‘Ah! And don’t tell me. She doesn’t understand you?’

  He pulls on a sock and then shakes his head. ‘I’m not sure understanding me is high on her list of priorities. I’m just there. But that isn’t the point. What’s important is that I no longer understand her.’

  ‘And what exactly am I supposed to do about that?’ I snort. ‘As if I much care anyway. And don’t talk to me about her not understanding. You should try working for her some time.’

  As soon as I say it, I bitterly regret it. The one thing I really don’t want to do is bitch about Davina. I feel quite low enough. But before I can get my retraction worded and spoken, he says. ‘That wasn’t worthy of you, even if it is true.’

  Which makes me mad.

  ‘I bloody well know that, thank you. I’m not myself. Can’t think why. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t been making too many successful life choices lately. Bit like you, I guess. But while we’re on the subject, just for the record, she certainly isn’t worthy of you.’

  He sits down again and pushes his hands though his hair. ‘What a mess.’

  ‘You already said that.’

  ‘No, I mean my life. What a fuck up.’

  ‘I don’t need to hear this. I don’t need the run down on why we got to here, thank you. Or, more specifically, why you got to here. Don’t try tugging at my heart strings about it. If your marriage is a cock up then you should go home and sort it.’

  I nearly said ‘end it’, but thank goodness I didn’t.

  ‘Believe me, I’ve been trying,’ he said. ‘Year in, year out. Trouble is, we’ve never been able to work out what the problem is. It’s just got steadily worse.’

  I recall Rose’s words about her and Matt’s problems.

  ‘Then you should try harder,’ I hear someone say. Can’t be me. ‘You should deal with it. You should talk. Not spend your time sending flirtatious emails to strangers.’

  His eyes flick up but he doesn’t rise to it. He shakes his head. ‘Oh we’ve done plenty of talking. Still do, as it happens. I say ‘what’s the matter’ and she says ‘I don’t know.’ It gets a touch repetitive, you know? She’s seeing someone now though. Has been for some months.’

  I gape. ‘Seeing someone?’

  ‘A therapist. To work through her problems.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. Not much, anyway. The only progress we seem to have made is acknowledging that Davina has some sort of deep rooted psychological problem that we need to make progress with. But that, apparently, is progress.’

  His words chill me so much that I can feel the winter afternoon drawing its frosty tendrils around me. This doesn’t sound dead in the water to me. The word ‘progress’ hangs between us like a starched white hankie on a washing line.

  ‘But she still loves you?’

  ‘She says so. Just doesn’t want to have sex with me. And wants children - badly. Just doesn’t want to do what you need to do to get them.’

  God, I think, you just never know. This new Davina is surreal.

  ‘And you’re sure there’s no one else?’

  He shakes his head. ‘This isn’t like that, Charlie. She says not. I believe her. She’s in a mess. She’s ill. She’s -’’

  ‘And you still love her.’ My voice has dropped a whole octave.

  His eyes meet mine and hold them.

  ‘I care about her. I do care about her, Charlie. God, wouldn’t it all be so easy if I didn’t. And, Christ, I married her. But since meeting you -’

  ‘You mean emailing me.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Everything’s changed.’

  I turn away so he can’t see the tears sloshing about in my eyes, but he turns too and pulls my face around. Suddenly I no longer care if he sees it.

  ‘And not just for you!’ I shout. ‘I don’t need all this grief! I’m not going to be the sex in your bloody stale marital sandwich!’

  ‘Look, I know what you want from me. I know how you feel. God, if only I could -’

  ‘Turn the clock back?’ I start collecting up the small evidences of my passing. My boots, my handbag. My swizzled up scrunchie. I feel dirty.

  ‘Please don’t do this.’

  ‘Do what? Leave this situation with some modicum of dignity?’ The tears are tracking down my face now. I sit on the bed and zip up my boots then start rummaging for my Handy Andies. He kneels in front of me.

  ‘Charlie, we can’t just draw a line under this. It’s not going to go away. Not now.’

  I snap my body back upright. ‘How many more times are you going to spin me that line? We’re both adults! We can draw a line under any bloody situation we like! It just takes a little strength of character. It just takes knowing what you want, for goodness sake!’

  He stands up as well.

  ‘I know what I want,’ I tell him. ‘I want out of this. You go and tend your sick wife and leave me to go climb my mountain.’ I yank my handbag over my shoulder and head towards the door.

 
‘But I need you -’

  No, not that. I swivel. ‘So leave her!’

  His eyes drop. Six unhappy seconds thump by.

  They rise again briefly. ‘Charlie, I can’t.’

  Adam’s words, now released from their home in my nightmares, seem to flutter and dance in the light from the lamp.

  ‘Exactly,’ I say, quietly, pulling the door open. ‘I’m done here, I think.’

  I go down via the stairs.

  It is barely five but already the February night is reclaiming the city. Car headlamps stream back and forth in the murk and the offices are beginning to spew out their gaggles of typists and clerks. It’s far enough to the car park that I don’t want to walk it. I can’t seem to stop the huge gulping sobs that have accompanied my flight down the hotel stairs, and I can’t face the curious looks of commuters. When a see the welcome orange glow of a taxi for hire light, I don't care that it’s headed the wrong way.

  ‘Cost you, darling,’ the cabbie says, incurious yet smiling. ‘Traffic like this, you’d be quicker to walk.’

  I climb in regardless and we head off through the car-scape, my fistful of tissue a tight ball in my lap.

  He is right, of course. It takes close to twenty minutes to double back through the side streets, but I’ve at least dried my eyes and regained some sort of control. I pay my parking fee - a king’s ransom for four such deeply miserable hours - and take the lift down to where my car waits to greet me. All I want to do now is get home, get my life back. It’ll take a good hour, I suppose, to get out of London, but with luck and dry weather I should be home before nine.

  Another unsatisfactory encounter.

  I recall little of the journey home. Ten minutes out of London and I remember that I left my mascara and tweezers and coconut Chapstick on the shelf in the en suite in Adam’s room. And I start crying again. And then I cannot stop crying. I simply cannot stop crying. I cry hot salty tears till my throat feels like gravel, curse Adam, curse me, curse Davina, curse marriage, curse the moon and the stars and the inky night sky. I feel alone in a way that I could never have imagined; a remnant of myself; a small ragged scrap.

  But, somehow, I get there.

  I finally slew into the drive, still sniffing, and yank the hot car to a shuddering stop. As well as all the cares in the world, I have returned, I remember, with a smelly Sainsbury’s plastic basket, which Rose has thoughtfully filled with some of Matt’s organic bounty; three cabbages, some parsnips, and about a million fat sprouts. My lot now, my prize. My foreseeable future. Making sprout soup, or hotpot, or sweet parsnip batons. Not love. Not with Adam. Not with Adam.

  After dumping the basket on the doorstep I am just returning to the car for my suitcase when I become aware of my front door opening and someone coming out of the house.

  ‘Ah,’ says a male voice. ‘There you are. Thank goodness!’

  But it is not Dad, and not Ben and (as if it would be) not Adam.

  The voice is joined by a body.

  ‘Good God!’ I say. ‘Phil?’

  ‘Charlie,’ he says, waving.

  ‘Phil!’ I say, boggled.

  ‘Yes, it is me’ he confirms. Then says, ‘Charlie, it’s your Dad.’

  Chapter 22

  For a moment my ears must have seized up or something. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, quite unable to fathom. Was it a development in the Rose/Phil affair?

  Phil took the case from me and trundled in through the front door. He had already deposited the veg in the hall. I followed him, mute and uncomprehending.

  ‘Your Father, Charlie,’ he said gently.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dad? What about him?’

  ‘He’s in hospital. Look, you mustn’t worry -’ He took my arm at this point and squeezed it reassuringly ‘- he’s not in grave danger, or anything. They think he went into a diabetic hypo - or was it hyper? Anyway, whatever it was, he hit his head. Come on. I’ll drive you to the hospital. Karen’s down there with Ben.’

  By the time I had digested this sufficiently to obliterate traces of the sudden, violent and terrifying image of my father lying dead in the hospital morgue, Phil had already steered me to his car and fed me into the passenger seat.

  ‘But Dad doesn’t have diabetes,’ I said.

  He shrugged as he switched the ignition on.

  ‘Apparently, he does. So they said, anyway. But we’ll know more, I’m sure, soon.’ He glanced across at me. ‘Don’t worry. He’s okay.’

  I tried to work out why all this meant I was sitting in Phil’s car.

  ‘But when did this happen? And why are you here? And Karen, and -’

  ‘Ben called me. He’s such a sensible lad. He said you were away and that his Grandad had collapsed and hurt his head and that he wasn’t sure what to do. He was very calm, very grown up about it.’

  ‘But when was this?’

  ‘About three. Maybe earlier.’ He manoeuvred the car around a mini roundabout. God, what had I been doing at about three? Oh, Lord.

  ‘So I came straight over,’ he said. ‘Lucky we were in as it happened. We were supposed to be going on a coppicing weekend, but they’d cancelled it because of some local flooding. Anyway, Ben told me you’d spent the week at Rose’s - how is she, by the way?’ Not a pause, not a flicker. ‘And she told me about you visiting the embassy and so on, and that she doubted you’d be home much before ten -’

  Embassy? So on? Jesus. What?

  ‘Um. Yes. She’s fine. Really good. The news was good. She’s fine. Um. Traffic wasn’t too bad. But was Ben okay? Oh, poor Ben. What a dreadful thing to happen with me not here. Oh, poor Ben. If only -’

  His hand brushed my arm. ‘Don’t fret about it. You were doing your bit down at Rose’s. You had no way of knowing something like this would happen, did you?’

  ‘Yes, but - oh, poor Ben. Poor Dad.’

  ‘But everything’s fine, Charlie. So don’t beat yourself up about it.’

  Rose said that. Rose did. Her expression, or his?

  ‘I know, but -’

  ‘But nothing. What are friends for?’

  If only he knew.

  We drove on in the darkness for a few minutes. Funny to be sitting here in Phil’s familiar car (the same Volvo?) with Phil’s familiar profile beside me, Phil’s familiar pale hands on the steering wheel. In some ways it all seemed a lifetime ago. Yet, for a moment, I could half see myself back with him. The gentle pace of an undemanding relationship, the lack of expectation; the absence of stress. Yet now I knew what I knew he seemed completely unfathomable. As if there was a whole chunk of him I’d never quite managed to find. If only he did know, I pondered. He’d been there, hadn’t he? He’d surely know how to cope. We stopped at the lights by the hospital entrance. He turned.

  ‘Charlie, are you okay? You look -’

  ‘Like shit. I know. Tell me about it.’

  He looked closer. Nodded.

  ‘Your eyes -’

  I tutted dismissively. ‘You know London. Pollution Central.’

  Which explanation he made a good attempt at looking like he believed. Not good enough, but his best shot, I supposed.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Here we are, then. Your Dad’s been taken to Helen Keller ward. I’m not sure what the plan for the head injury is. Still, we’ll sort all that out now. Now you’re home safely.’

  We thread our way up and onto the ward. I see Karen first. She’s in smiling conversation with the sister. Belatedly, I remember that she’s a nurse. A good person to have around in a crisis. A good person, full stop. Which makes me feel wretched. Because I too am now a defiler of marriages. I have colluded and deceived. I have lied. Phil beckons.

  ‘Here we are then,’ he says again brightly. As if we’ve assembled for an interval drink in the theatre. Do I detect now the merest hint of discomfort in his voice? On my behalf, I suspect, given the logistics of our relationships. He knows nothing of the maelstrom that my life has been since him. I thank
them both, profusely, persuade them that Ben and I really will be fine getting a cab home, and hurry off to see my father. I turn to wave as I reach the bed, but they are just turning the corner. Hand in hand. Okay. Happy even, I suspect.

  Ben stands as I arrive and straight away shoves his hands in to the pockets of his jeans. This means he wants a cuddle but cannot bring himself to instigate it. His expression tells me not to touch him. Not yet. But compassion almost overwhelms me. He is trying so hard not to cry. How many hours of being brave, being together? My poor baby. I bustle and fuss and don’t offer too much gushing sympathy. I know he’ll hold out if we’re matter of fact about things. My father, understanding, does likewise and clucks at me. The short term plan for his head injury, it seems, is to make him look like a comedy toothache poster. He resembles the little fat pig from Bugs Bunny.

  ‘Charlotte, there you are,’ he chides. his voice is warm and reassuring. ‘Trust you to be off gallivanting when I’m busy falling over.’ He laughs. ‘And trust me to do it, eh? Eh, Ben? Trust your silly old Grandad!’ He grins. ‘What a palaver! All this nonsense for the want of a little sugar. Then he stops. And peers at me. ‘Charlotte? What on earth’s happened to your face, dear? You look absolutely dreadful - like you’ve collided with a tree!’

  At which point I have no choice to abandon my composure. Because, quite without meaning to, I flop down on the bed with him and try as I might not to, I howl and howl and howl.

  But he’s going to be fine. The x-rays confirm it. And Ben and I, relieved, make our way home not long after. What we both need is sleep; him for growth, me for oblivion, but if telephones could get up and tap people insistently on shoulders, the Simpson telephone would be doing just that as we tumble, exhausted and drained, into the house. It’s Rose.

  ‘God, there you are! What’s been going on? Is your father okay?’

  I say, ‘yes, yes, yes,’ and collapse into a heap by the telephone table. Ben steps over me and heads into the kitchen, clutching the burger and chips we picked up for him on the way home.