A Special Relationship (18 page)

‘I think I need to lie down.’

Tony gave me another of his long, nonplussed looks.

‘Right,’ he finally said. ‘Want me to help you back to bed?’

I haven’t been in bloody bed since I’ve come back home, Tony … or hadn’t you noticed?

‘No, I’ll manage,’ I said.

I got up, and left the kitchen, and went to the bedroom, and changed into my pyjamas, and fell into bed, and pulled the blankets up over my head, and waited for sleep to come.

But it didn’t arrive. On the contrary, I was shockingly wide awake, despite a deep, painful fatigue. But my mind was in high-octane overdrive – ricocheting from thought-to-thought, worry-to-worry. Entire horrendous scenarios played themselves out in my head – the last of which involved Jack, aged three, curled up, ball-like in an armchair, unable to focus on me, or his general surroundings, or the world at large, while some hyper-rational, hyper-calm social worker said in a hyper-rational tone of voice, ‘I really do think that you and your husband must consider some sort of “managed care” environment for your son. A place where his needs can be attended to twenty-four hours a day.’

But then, this catatonic child sprang up from the chair, and abruptly commenced the most extreme temper-tantrum imaginable – screaming non-syllabic sounds, upturning a side table, and knocking out of his way everything that strayed into his path as he charged across the living room, before falling into the bathroom and smashing the mirror with his fist. As I struggled to calm him down – and get a towel wrapped around his now haem-orrhaging hand – I caught brief sight of myself in the shattered glass: aged beyond recognition in the three short years since Jack’s birth; the perma-crescent-moons beneath my eyes and the cleaved lines giving a clear indication of my so-called ‘quality of life’ since my poor brain-damaged boy had been born.

However, my moment of exhausted self-pity was quickly over – as he began to slam his head against the sink. And—

‘Tony!’

No answer. But, then again, why would there be – as I was in bed and the door was shut. I glanced at the clock: 2.05. How did that happen? I hadn’t been asleep, had I? I turned over. Tony wasn’t next to me in bed. All the lights in the room were still on. Immediately I was out of bed and in the corridor. But before I headed downstairs to see if he was up, watching a late night movie, I saw the light on the still uncarpeted stairs leading up to his office.

The attic conversion had been finished while I had been in hospital, and Tony had evidently expended considerable effort on putting it together. His fitted bookshelves were now stacked with his extensive library. Another wall was filled with CDs. He had a small stereo system and a short-wave radio in easy reach of the large stylish desk that he chose with me at the Conran Shop. There was a new Dell computer centre-stage on the desk, and a new orthopaedic Herman Miller chair, upon which Tony was now sitting, staring intently at a word-filled screen.

‘This is impressive,’ I said, looking around.

‘Glad you like it.’

I wanted to mention something about how it might have been nice if he’d concentrated his energies on unpacking the more shared corners of the house … but thought it wise to hold my tongue. It had been getting me into enough trouble recently.

‘What time is it?’ he asked absently.

‘Just a little after two.’

‘Couldn’t sleep?’

‘Something like that. You too?’

‘Been working since you went off to bed.’

‘On what? Something for the paper?’

‘The novel, actually.’

‘Really?’ I said, sounding pleased. Because Tony had been threatening to start his first foray into fiction when I met him in Cairo. At the time he intimated that if he ever got transferred back to dreaded, prosaic London, he was finally going to try to write the Graham Greeneesque novel that had been rattling around his head for the past few years.

There was a part of me that always wondered if Tony had the long-term discipline that was required for this prolonged task. Like so many journos who’d done time in the field, he loved the manic hunt for a story, and the hurried, frenetic rush to file copy by the necessary deadline. But could he actually retreat to a little room, day in, day out, to incrementally push a narrative along – as he once bragged to me that two hours was about the longest time he’d ever spent writing a story?

Yet here he was, in the middle of the night, working. I was both impressed and pleasantly surprised.

‘That’s great news,’ I said.

Tony shrugged. ‘It might turn out to be crap.’

‘It might turn out to be good.’

Another shrug.

‘How far are you into it?’ I asked.

‘Just a few thousand words.’

‘And …?’

‘Like I said, I haven’t a clue if it’s up to anything.’

‘But you will keep writing it?’

‘Yeah – until my nerve fails me. Or when I decide it’s beyond useless.’

I came over to him and put my hand on his shoulder.

‘I won’t let you stop.’

‘That a promise?’ he asked, finally looking up at me.

‘Yes. It is. And listen …’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry about before.’

He turned back to the screen.

‘I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning … if you can stop worrying.’

But when I woke at seven that morning, Tony wasn’t next to me in bed. Rather, I found him asleep on the new pull-out sofa in his study, a small pile of printed pages stacked up by the computer. When I brought him a cup of tea a few hours later, my first question was, ‘How late did you work?’

‘Only ’til three,’ he said, sounding half awake.

‘You could have come down and shared the bed.’

‘Didn’t want to wake you.’

But the next night, he did the same thing. I’d just come back from the hospital – my second visit of the day to Jack. It was nine o’clock – and I was slightly aggrieved to find Tony already at work in his office, as he had told me he couldn’t make it to the hospital this evening, because of yet another international crisis (something in Mozambique, I think) that was keeping him.

‘Anyway, it’s not as if Jack will be missing me,’ he said when he phoned me that afternoon at home.

‘But I’d like it if you were with me.’

‘And I’d like it too. But …’

‘I know, I know – work is work. And who cares if your son …’

‘Let’s not start that,’ he said sharply.

‘Fine, fine,’ I said, sounding truly tetchy now. ‘Have it your way. I’ll see you at home.’

So finding him in his office that evening really did peeve me.

‘I thought you said you’d be working late at the paper.’

‘We got the pages to bed earlier than expected.’

‘Well, thanks a lot for rushing over to the Mattingly to see your son.’

‘I only got in fifteen minutes ago.’

‘And went straight to work on your novel?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You really expect me to believe that?’

‘I was inspired,’ he said, without the faintest trace of irony.

‘I suppose you’ll now want dinner?’

‘No – I grabbed something at the office. Anyway, what I really want to do is work on, if that’s okay.’

‘Don’t you want to know how Jack is?’

‘I do know that. I called the hospital around six, and got a full update from the ICU sister. But, I suppose, you know that already.’

I wanted to scream. Instead, I just turned on my heel and left. After throwing something together in the kitchen, and washing it back with a single glass of wine (I wasn’t risking another descent into weirdness), I poured Tony a glass and brought it back up to his office.

‘Oh, ta,’ he said, looking up from the screen.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

‘Good, good,’ he said in a tone which indicated that I was interrupting his flow.

‘Want to watch the
Ten O’Clock News?’

‘Better keep on with this.’

Two hours later, I stuck my head back in his office.

‘I’m going to bed now,’ I said.

‘Fine.’

‘You coming?’

‘Be down in a moment.’

But when I turned the bedside light off fifteen minutes later, he hadn’t joined me. And when I came to at eight the next morning, the space next to me was empty.

So, once again, I climbed the stairs to his office – only to find him under the duvet on his sofa bed.

This time, however, I didn’t bring him a cup of tea. Nor did I wake him. But when he staggered downstairs around ten, looking harassed, the first thing he said to me was, ‘Why the hell did you let me sleep in?’

‘Well, since we now seem to be living separate lives, I don’t have to be your alarm clock.’

‘I spend two nights on the sofa, and you’re already talking about separate lives.’

‘I’m just wondering if you’re trying to tell me something. Or if this is some passive-aggressive—’

‘Passive-aggressive.
For fuck’s sake, I was just working late. On the novel – which
you
so want me to write. So what’s the problem?’

‘I’m just …’

‘Insanely insecure.’

I didn’t know what to say to that. Except, ‘Perhaps.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t be. And I will be at the hospital tonight. And I will share our bed. All right?’

True to his word, Tony did show up at the Mattingly around eight that evening. He was half an hour late, but I decided not to make a big deal of it. I had already spent the better part of an hour making eye contact with my son. He seemed to be watching me watching him – and for the first time in weeks, I actually found myself smiling.

‘Look at this,’ I said as Tony walked down the ward towards us. He crouched down beside us and looked at his son.

‘I told you he would be all right,’ he said.

Yes, you did. But why do you have to remind me of that
now?

‘He really sees us,’ I said, deciding it was not the moment to respond to Tony’s comment.

‘I suppose he does.’ He waved briefly in his direction. ‘Hello there. We are your parents, you poor bugger.’

‘He’ll be just fine. Because we’ll make sure of that.’

‘Your mother’s an all-American optimist,’ Tony said to Jack. Our son just peered out at us, no doubt wondering where he was, and what was this thing called life.

That night, Tony did get into bed with me, and read Graham Greene’s
The Honorary Consul,
and kissed me goodnight. Though sex was still definitely out of the physical question, a cuddle would have been nice. But, then again, a casual cuddle (or, at least, one without the follow-through of sex) was never Tony’s style. When I woke the next morning … true to form, I found him upstairs, sprawled out on his sofa bed, more pages piled up by the computer.

‘You seem to be having very productive nights,’ I said.

‘It’s a good time to work,’ he said.

‘And it also gives you the excuse not to sleep with me.’

‘I did last night.’

‘For how long?’

‘Does that really matter? You
were
asleep, after all.’

‘As soon as I was conked out, you went upstairs.’

‘Yes, that’s right. But I did come to bed with you as requested, didn’t I?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said, realizing I had nowhere to go in this argument.

‘And the novel is getting written.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘There is no problem, Tony.’

But I also knew that my husband was shrewdly ensuring that, when Jack came home, he’d be able to sidestep all the broken, sleepless nights by using his novel as an excuse … and the sofa bed in his office as his refuge.

Once again, however, I feared raising this point, as I could see that every time I said something contrary, he’d sigh heavily and make me feel like the nag I never wanted to be. And he had let my little free-fall episode come and go without major comment. Just as he’d also been admirably Teflon-like when I was riding the hormonal roller coaster in hospital. So, to keep the domestic peace (especially given Jack’s imminent arrival home), I thought it best not to push this point.
Grin and bear it:
the great marital bromide.

But I decided to sidestep all such negative thoughts by using the next few days to get the house into some sort of reasonable shape before our son filled every imaginable space. Fortunately, the foreman and his team were outside our front door at eight the next morning, ready to start work (Tony must have really played on their guilt – or simply stopped paying them). And Collins – the Northern Irish boss of the crew – was solicitousness itself, asking me with great concern about my ‘wee one’, telling me he was ‘sorry for my troubles’, but that, ‘God willing, the wee fella will be just grand’. He also assured me that he and his boys would be able to finish all the large-scale work within a week.