The Adultery Club

by Tess Stimson

  “I could do with a Scotch. Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”

  I am aware of Mal’s hurt and bewildered expression, but deliberately fail to catch her eye as I leave the kitchen. I didn’t think it would be this difficult.

  Sophie flings herself on me with melodramatic gusto the moment she sees me; her godfather would be proud. Evie, however, doesn’t look up from what she’s doing, the tip of her tongue protruding with concentration as she pores over her work. Mal does exactly the same thing when she’s working on one of her cookery books.

  “Hey, Sophs,” I say, ruffling my eldest daughter’s hair. I peer over Evie’s shoulder. “What are you doing, sweetheart?”

  “Stuff,” Evie says succinctly.

  “What sort of stuff?”

  “About God and mothers,” Sophie scorns. “We did that years ago.”

  “Well, you were Evie’s age years ago,” I say reasonably.

  “Who’s the boss at our house?” Evie demands, looking up.

  “Your mother allows me the honor,” I say dryly.

  “Mummy is, of course,” Sophie says. “You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.”

  I don’t need reminding of Mal’s all-seeing eye. I reach for Evie’s homework handout, scanning her startling answers, which are written in vivid purple pen: Evie naturally assumes the school’s edict that all homework be completed in boring HB pencil does not apply to her.

  It appears that Charles Darwin was a naturist (not a pretty thought) who wrote the Organ of the Species in which, apparently, he said God’s days were not just twenty-four hours but without watches who knew?

  Evie’s eyes narrow, daring me to laugh. It is a struggle. I cannot imagine what trendy modern teaching methods lead primary school teachers to think it a good idea to ask a classroom of precocious six-year-olds what God made mothers from, but Evie’s answer—“He got his start from men’s bones, then he mostly used string”—suggests my middle daughter has significantly more imagination than do they.

  I’m muffling a howl at Evie’s answer to the disingenuous query, What would make your Mummy perfect? “Diet. You know, her hair. I’d diet, maybe blue.” And then a sudden cold thought slices across my laughter, silencing me so sharply that Evie stops scowling and looks at me in surprise. These are the moments you’d miss if you lost Mal.

  Divorce turns children into flesh-and-blood time-shares. Residence with one parent, alternate weekends and Wednesday evenings with the other. Christmas Eve with Daddy this year, Christmas Day next. We may dress up the inequity and call it joint custody, but the hard truth is that a child only has one home; anywhere else and it’s just visiting.

  I can’t believe I’ve been so damned stupid. Dear God, if Mal ever finds out—

  I put Evie to bed, and circumvent the usual four rounds of SpongeBob Squarepants—a perverse concept, particularly the aquatic Texan squirrel; whatever happened to Pooh?—with a contraband tube of Smarties; Mal would have a fit if she knew, but tonight I lack the emotional and vocal reserves to essay the demanding roles of Mr. Krabs, Squidward, and the rest.

  Sophie settles herself happily in the saggy kitchen sofa with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Pretending I haven’t heard Mal’s request to stay and chat while she finishes up dinner, I slope off to my study.

  Slumped in my leather armchair, I stare moodily into my glass of Scotch. Everything seems so normal. Except that for the first time since we met, I can’t tell Mal what’s weighing so heavily on my mind. We’ve always had such an honest relationship; we know each other so well. How could I have jeopardized that?

  It was a one-off. The bombs and—force majeure, the insurance people call it. Clearly I could help it, but—events, dear boy. Events. As Macmillan observed.

  What’s absolutely certain, perfectly apodictic, is that it won’t happen again. I cannot—

  “Da-aa-addy!”

  “Mal!” I call through the open study door.

  I hear the clatter of pans, but Mal doesn’t respond.

  “Da-aa-addy!”

  “Mal! Evie wants something!” A cold draft whisking up the kitchen passageway suggests Mal is outside in the scullery. Suppressing my annoyance, I put down my drink and go to the bottom of the stairs. “Yes, Evie?”

  “I’m thirsty. Can I have a drink of water?”

  “No, you had your chance. No more messing about, it’s lights out.”

  I’ve just picked up my glass of Scotch when her voice rings out again. “Da-aaa-ddy!”

  “What now?”

  “I’m really, really thirsty. Please can I have a drink of water?”

  Where the hell is Mal? “I told you, no! Now settle down, Evie, you have school in the morning. If you ask me again, you’ll get a smacked bottom.”

  This time the glass gets as far as my lips. “Daa-aaa-aaa-ddy!”

  “What?”

  “When you come in to give me my smacked bottom, can you bring me a glass of water?”

  I relate this exchange to Mal later as we brush our teeth companionably in the bathroom together. We exchange complicit parental smiles—“She got the water, didn’t she?” “Yes, what I didn’t spill from laughing on the way upstairs”—and I tell myself, See, it’s going to be OK, you can get past this. Last night was a mistake, an unconscionable mistake, but what’s done is done. You just have to put it behind you. Forget about it. It never happened.

  But when we go to bed and Mal’s hand drifts gently across my chest and then lower, questioning, I pull the bedclothes up to my shoulders and roll away from her.

  The next morning I leap out of bed, shushing Mal back under the covers. I organize the girls in a trice—I really can’t see why Mal finds mornings so taxing, especially since Evie lets the cat out of the bag and admits her mother gives them tortilla chips every day for breakfast—and whisk them off to school. The Daddy-you-forgot-to-do-packed-lunches crisis (I could have sworn I paid for school dinners) is averted with a ten-pound note which will no doubt be spent solely on slimy canteen fries. I am beginning to see that the principal consequence of my indiscretion will be rotten teeth and childhood obesity.

  Buoyed by an energy and optimism attributable to my new-leaf frame of mind, I stop at Margot’s Flowers on my way back home and demand the most extravagant arrangement the shop purveys. “For my wife,” I add needlessly.

  The girl messes with secateurs and raffia and I resist the urge to tell her to hurry up.

  “Anniversary or birthday?”

  “Neither.”

  She grins pertly. “Oh, dear. In the doghouse, are we? What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I say stiffly.

  “Never mind.” She winks. “This should earn you a few brownie points.”

  Mal looks astonished when I walk into the kitchen with the flowers, which are roughly the size and weight of a small child. She tightens the belt of her ratty candlewick dressing gown before opening her arms to receive them. “What have I done to deserve this?”

  “Do I need a reason to give my wife flowers?” I say, stung.

  She hesitates. “It’s because of what happened in London, isn’t it?”

  I thank God that her back is turned to me as she reaches for a vase. The shock must surely register on my face. She knows. How can she know?

  “Ah—London?”

  She cuts open the cellophane and buries her face in the blooms. “Oh, gorgeous! The bombs, Nicholas. Post dramatic stress or whatever it is. You come close to death and suddenly you start to value what you could have lost, it’s like you’re born again or something, there was an article in the Daily Mail.”

  My relief is such that for a moment I cannot speak. “Yes,” I stumble. “Yes. In a way.”

  “It’s dreadful about those poor people—they’ve identified a hundred and seventy-nine, so far, and you know there’ll be more, it doesn’t bear thinking about—but we were lucky, darling, nothing terrible happened to our family yesterday. We can’t let these peo
ple win, we can’t give in to them.”

  I smile awkwardly and reach past her for the pile of post on the kitchen table. Mal turns back to the flowers, giving a satisfied murmur as she tweaks the final bloom into place.

  “I can drop you at the station on my way into Salisbury,” she says, hefting the vase toward the sitting room. “I guess you’ll be needed at the office to get things back up and running again.” She hesitates on the kitchen threshold. “Nicholas. I’ve been meaning to tell you, I saw Trace Pitt yesterday, he stopped by to—actually, to offer me a job.”

  I sift through the brown envelopes, pulling out the renewal notice for my subscription to The Lawyer. I must make sure Emma doesn’t forget to deal with it. “Mmm?”

  “Working at—well, managing, really—his new restaurant.”

  Emma has sent out e-mails asking the staff to return to work today; apart from the broken windows, which she has already had replaced—“I know a charming man in Epping, Mr. Lyon, cash in hand, but he’ll get us sorted in a jiffy”—our office suffered little damage. I feel mingled terror and reluctant excitement at the thought of seeing Sara again.

  “He’s very keen—silly amounts of money really—and he promised no late nights, plenty of staff to cover for me, but of course I wanted to ask you first—”

  “Ask me what?”

  “If I should do it.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course you should.”

  “I should?” She sounds surprised. “Really?”

  “Absolutely,” I say absently. “I really do need to get going, Mal.”

  “Sorry, sorry, yes, let me just go and get dressed.” She brushes by the cork noticeboard next to the Aga; a sheaf of yellowing papers flutter to the ground and Mal picks them up and repins them with infuriating slowness. “Oh, yes, that reminds me. It’s the girls’ Open House next week, Nicholas, you need to be home early that day, we absolutely can’t be late. Not after the school play.”

  I don’t need reminding of that little fiasco. “Fine. I’ll make sure I’m there. When?”

  “Friday the nineteenth. It starts at seven. And please don’t be late, Nicholas. I’m not sure I can stand Evie wearing her Wellingtons to bed for a month again in protest.”

  “Friday the nineteenth?”

  Sara grimaces. “I know it’s short notice, but press tickets are always like that. Michèle can’t go, she’s working in Paris that weekend, but she knows how much I love opera and wondered if I’d like them. I know it doesn’t float everyone’s boat—Tristan und Isolde can be a bit heavy—”

  “Good Lord, no, I love Wagner! My favorite composer, in fact. And I haven’t seen Tristan for years.”

  “Really? How funny, he’s my favorite composer, too.”

  Christ, she looks amazing in that plum shirt. So decadent; so bedroom. Tiny beads of sweat glisten in the shadowy vale between her breasts.

  I sigh. “It’s just—”

  “I’m sorry, Nick, you’re probably busy. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Any other night and I might have been tempted,” I say truthfully. “But the nineteenth is out, one of my daughters has a thing at school, I have to be there—”

  She shrugs. “Another time. Probably just as well,” she adds, her gray gaze direct, “since I can’t guarantee you’d have made the last train home.”

  It sounds like a statement.

  We both know it’s a question.

  8

  Sara

  Fuck, I hate opera. I don’t know what possessed me to suggest this; I must be off my head. And Wagner, for Christ’s sake. So bloody dark and depressing. I’m not exactly into the fat-lady oeuvre at the best of times, but at least a cheery bit of Mozart would have been bearable. Figaro, maybe; I almost like that. Wagner was great mates with Nietzsche, according to my program blurb; which explains a good deal about the pair of them. No wonder poor Nietzsche came all over nihilistic if he had to listen to this misery all the time.

  I pinch a sideways glance. Nick’s tipped forward in his plush velvet seat, long fingers steepled, absolutely still as he gazes up in rapture at the stage. Bless him.

  I stifle a yawn behind my program. The things we do for love. Look at über-city-girl Princess Diana schlepping off to Balmoral in her green wellies to convince Prince Charles there was nothing she liked better than standing around in the pissing rain all day, while men who smelled of horses and women who looked like them took pot shots at innocent pheasants.

  And OK, there’s no denying I have developed a certain fondness for Nick. A penchant, as it were. Or I wouldn’t be here. Mind you, the grief he gave me over the tickets! Jesus. He had a total shit fit when we were shown to the best seats in the house, ranting that no wonder the BBC was in trouble, we all end up paying for these press junkets, it’s taxpayers’ money after all, do I have any idea how much front row orchestra seats cost?

  Er, yes, actually, Nick. Nearly four hundred quid. I could have bought that gorgeous russet chiffon corset from La Petite Salope, they had it in my size.

  (Note to self: next time am inventing freebies from imaginary journo friend to facilitate shameless seduction of boss—again—make sure they v. cheap freebies.)

  I swear I’ve aged ten years by the time the lights come back up and the audience—average age: ninety-five and three-quarters—creaks to its bunioned feet to applaud. The fat woman next to me almost knocks me out as her pink taffeta arms pump like fleshy pistons. Somebody shoot me if I ever end up with bingo wings like that. Another encore and she’ll take off.

  Thank God I’m not married to Nick. Imagine having to sit through this on a regular basis—

  And then he turns and smiles at me with such boyish pleasure that my heart flips and trades places with my stomach.

  “You really enjoyed that, didn’t you?” Nick says fondly as we thread our way along the crowded aisle. “You looked as if you were absolutely lost in the music.”

  I’d sit through anything for you, lover. “Mmm.”

  “It’s unusual to find a woman who really appreciates Wagner. He appeals to a more sophisticated musical palate. Very much your red Zinfandel, as it were. Mal—uh—many women prefer something a little more frivolous. Mozart is very popular. That’s if they like opera at all.” His hand on the small of my back guides me through the crowded foyer. “Not that one can dismiss Mozart out of hand, of course, but to my mind one cannot compare The Magic Flute with the solid genius of Der Ring.”

  I turn another yawn into a cough. Killing the sex buzz here, Nick, with all the opera chitchat: sweet-talk it is not. And don’t think I missed that little Freudian slip, either. Ouch.

  Not that hearing her name makes me feel guilty, or anything. I mean, what goes on between Nick and his wife isn’t any of my business. Is it? To be honest, I feel sorry for both of them. She obviously can’t keep up with him, poor thing. She must feel totally out of her depth when she ventures into his world. And how frustrating for a man as bright and sophisticated as he is to be stuck with such a dull, suburban sort of woman. I mean, what do they find to say to each other? Conversation in their house probably revolves around the children and what joint to have for Sunday lunch. He must be so bored, in and out of the bedroom. No wonder he has to look elsewhere.

  When you think about it, I’m probably lightening the load for her, too. Having me to talk to must take the pressure off, even if she doesn’t realize it. I bet he goes home in a much better mood when he’s had a chance to offload some of his stress with a woman who really understands him. And it’s not like I’m ever going to break them up, or anything. I’d never do that.

  I thank God I boned up on the bloody opera at the weekend. Got to stay one step ahead if I want to be Ms. Simpatico.

  “Of course, you can’t ignore the fact that Tristan und Isolde changed the course of musical history,” I offer. “Driven by his unconsummated passion for Mathilde, the wife of one of his patrons, Wagner took the iconographic adulterers of medieval literature, and underpinned their tragedy with S
chopenhauer’s quasioriental philosophy—”

  “—and as the end result rewrote the entire harmonic rulebook! Absolutely! A woman who’s beautiful and bright. Now, tell me, do you think—”

  Shit, don’t ask me any questions, I only memorized the one paragraph from Opera for Morons.

  But beautiful and bright: I like that. And I especially like that he likes it, too.

  Why is it savvy women usually want men with smarts, but most intelligent men are happy with the dumbest of fuck puppets on their arms? Is our biological imperative for a protective hunter-gatherer/pneumatic walking womb (delete as appropriate) really that strong?

  Nick Lyon is a very unusual man. I just hope his dippy wife appreciates him.

  I spin on my four-inch heels—I am so going to pay for these tomorrow: I have blisters you could trampoline on—and allow the jostling crowd to crush me right up against Nick’s chest as we spill into the Covent Garden piazza. “You know, Nick, all that passion has left me beyond starved,” I say. “I know this cool little sushi bar round the corner, Yuzo’s, it’s always open late. Their sashimi is out of this world, though of course if you don’t like sushi—”

  A pin-striped wool rod of iron presses against my thigh. “Not at all,” Nick chokes out, turning puce. “Perfect choice, actually: my favorite restaurant, in fact. Extraordinary coincidence—”

  Not that extraordinary, to be honest. Marvelous search engine, Google. Can find all sorts of useful little nuggets when you type someone’s name into it. Like interviews they gave to law magazines a couple of years ago in which they listed all their favorite things for some boring Desert Island Discs thing. What, you think I plucked the wretched German miseryguts out of thin air?

  Sushi was a bit of a surprise, I must admit. I had Nick down as a steak-and-kidney pie, spotted-dick-and-custard school dinners kind of man. Still waters do indeed run deep.

  My stomach rumbles as if I haven’t eaten for a day (which I haven’t: it’s the only way to get the zipper on this satin cocktail dress of Amy’s to close) and now it’s my turn to sizzle with mortification. Well, shit, a vociferous digestive tract, that’s attractive. Men don’t like women who actually eat to stay alive. At least raw fish is a minimalist kind of food (as opposed to Italian, which should only ever be eaten in front of people you never intend to have sex with). My enthusiasm for opera may be complete bullshit, but fortunately, I do really love sushi. I’m not sure even Princess Di could’ve choked down raw eel for love alone. Mind you, I suppose she could have always thrown it up again.