Altar Ego (18 page)

As I dressed in a cement cubicle littered with sweet wrappers and used condoms, I thought of my homeland: a nation of Eeyores; going for gold in the
Masochism
Olympics. I mean, ours is the only country in the world which had a revolution, then
asked the Monarchy back
.

Unlike my fellow Brits, I’d always craved adventure. The vibrancy of the unknown beckoned. But would I have the guts to follow? One minute I saw Zachary Phoenix Burne as the water taxi out of my own Dead Sea and I would trample women and children to get aboard. A split second later, this decision was brusquely shouldered aside by a craving for Jules. He was, after all, a beaten path in my brain.

As I pushed through the turnstile at the end of the long corridor of changing rooms, out into the late-Saturday summer sunshine, I could see Kate and Anouska sprawled over the car bonnet waiting for me; waiting for my answer.

And what
was
my answer? Could I really exfoliate my old layer of emotional skin and find a new one? My mind said no, but my body said yes. What can I tell you? My clitoris and I were separating on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.

‘Well, what the hell are you going to do?’ Kate interrogated the moment I slid my bare thighs on to the hot car upholstery in the back seat.

‘About what?’

Kate eye-rolled. ‘About global warming, obviously, you big boofhead.’

‘Come on, doll,’ Anouska fired up the ignition. ‘I’m not a mind-reader.’

‘If you
were
, you’d only have to charge
half price
,’ said Kate, belting up in the back.

‘Either way, doll, you’ve got to tell him before Zack’s agent does,’ said Anouska, squealing out on to the main road.

‘I know. I know. Besides, I’m not going to sneak around and lie about it any more. I’m not. I can’t. I’m starting to hate myself.’ Yes, it was time to go home and expose my Achilles’ heel to my husband … then walk all over him with it.

But how to go about it? I’d never had a ‘Things To Do Today’ list which read: 1) Buy tampons. 2) Book eyebrow shaping. 3)
Leave husband
.

I mean, what do you say? Maybe I could borrow from the Male ‘I’m Dumping You’ Hall of Fame? The ‘I need some space’, ‘I still love you – as a
friend
’, ‘I lied because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings’, ‘I’m just not good enough for you’, ‘It’s not you. It’s
me
’, ‘But you never
asked
me if I was gay?’ school.

I yearned for Zack. And cringed about hurting Julian. Yearn, cringe. Yearn, cringe. This was my seizured rumba all the way to Belsize Park. For a non-smoker, I also seemed to be trying to wrest the world nicotine-ingestion record from the beagle community.

At the sound of Anouska’s car ricocheting off other vehicles as she dog-legged down the road, Julian bounded out of our house and opened the door, beaming. ‘Hi. What took you so long? … Kate, Anouska, do come in for a drink.’

My two best friends swapped alarmed glances then widened their eyes at me in the rear-vision mirror.

‘Julian,’ I said urgently. ‘We have to talk.’

‘Sure … but let’s have a drink first.’ He opened the front car door and eased Anouska out on to the pavement. ‘I insist. It’s such a lovely evening. Kate, do come in.’

It’d been so long since he’d had a civil word to say to her that she followed automatically.

‘Julian …’ I slammed the passenger seat forward, hurled myself out of the sports car and scrambled up the front steps, my heart puncturing my ribcage with each fraught beat, practising the ‘I need more space’ spiel – space, friends, feelings, not good enough, it’s not
you
, gay etc. – in my head … and scuttled after him down the hall. ‘Julian …’ It was time to empty out all my guilty little pockets. But could I really speak the unspeakable? ‘Julian, there’s something I need to tell you …’

The living-room door swung open to reveal every single one of our friends and family. They were beaming idiotically in my direction, wine glasses in hand. ‘SURPRISE!’ they gushed, in merry unison.

My face froze. Julian wrapped an arm around me. ‘We never celebrated our wedding.’ He kissed me. ‘And, well, I just wanted you to know how much I love you.’

18
We Interrupt This Marriage To Bring You A News Bulletin

SURPRISE PARTIES GIVE
you the kind of surprise that makes you drop dead of a heart attack.

‘What were you going to say, darling?’ Julian touched my face tenderly.

‘Um … I was thinking that it was time we renewed our marriage vows!’ I lied, lighting up ten cigarettes simultaneously.

‘Friends … family …’
Oh Good God. He was going to make a speech. This was awful. This was like going to a school reunion when you’re the only one still unemployed
. ‘For those of you who didn’t already know, I’d just like to announce that Becky here is madly in love with a married man … Her husband.’ He kissed me. There was a gasp from those who didn’t know we’d knotted our nuptials. ‘I know this is not exactly the way we’d always planned to get married, but the truth is, Becky
is
a saint to marry me in any way at all.’
Oh this was unbearable. I hadn’t felt more humiliated since that dog humped my leg at the reception to celebrate Julian’s election as Deputy Vice President of the Law Society
. ‘I work long hours, often for no money. I’m terribly neglectful.’
This was worse than that time a woman winked at me while I was naked in the YMCA showers
. ‘And tonight, on our two month wedding anniversary, well, I just wanted to make it up to you, my darling.’ He toasted me. ‘The wittiest, prettiest woman in England.’
Oh, this was worse than buying Super Kotex and having the price checked at the supermarket till over the loudspeaker
. ‘I love Rebecca Steele more than life itself.’
Female eyeballs moistened en masse. Oh great. Why not just go over and cut his balls off with a pair of nail scissors?
‘Remember, I’m a professional,’ Julian said, to undercut the sentimentality. ‘Do not try this pretentiousness at home!’

He kissed my hair. Gathered around us were solicitors and clerks from his law firm; my colleagues from the ICA, a sprinkling of London’s Balsamic Vinegar Brigade, including the woman writer who was busy exhausting the literary possibilities of the labia; both sets of mutually loathing parents; Simon and Vivian and their gifted, unisex-clad children. They all applauded, then turned their collective, interrogative gaze upon moi. I realized with rampant horror that I was expected to say something. I also realized that I had goggle indentations around my eyes. Surprise parties really are the worst invention
since
the Femidom. All the guests have hours to preen and cream and Listerine while you get caught at the pool not having shaved your pits. My nails cut sickles of fear in each palm.

‘I didn’t
marry
Julian. He just came with the house.’

There was a surprised beat, then a gradual relaxation into laughter. Anouska shoved a glass of champagne into my trembling hand and Julian ruffled my shrubbery of red hair affectionately.

‘If you had any idea about this,’ I hissed to Kate and Annie through a lacquered smile of simulated gratitude, ‘I’ll kill you.’ But they looked as shell-shocked as I did. Obviously Julian knew that ‘Besties’ tell each other everything.

I intuited that my mother was on the guest list by the Chihuahua that had just zoomed straight up my trouser leg. It was the first time I’d seen my parents since the wedding debacle. Mum was wearing a black-bordered T-shirt emblazoned with the death mask of Frank Sinatra. Her massive bosom distorted his face, drunkenly.

‘Placements, sugared almonds. Ya could’ve ’ad the lot. ’Cept yer bottled out. I wanted it more than I want yer farver to quit playin’ lawn bowls.’ She jabbed an elbow into my father’s scrawny ribs. Still lingering in that twilight stage between living and dying – ‘Died of boredom’ they’ll write on his death certificate – ‘he twitched’. I know Julian works hard an’ that, but he’s a good provider … Nothin’ wrong with bein’ effluent.’

Julian winked at me as he smothered a laugh.

Julian’s mother – a petit-point-footstool, dried-flowers-in-the-grate, stripped-pine-mug-tree kind of Wimbledon woman – kissed me coldly somewhere near my ear. ‘Hello, Rebecca,’ she said, in that voice that implied that the greetee has just been diagnosed a cholera carrier. Horrified by the gene pool, the gene
paddling
pool, into which her eldest son had waded, my mother-in-law’s lips protruded into a pout of indignation, then sank, the folds at the corners of her mouth filling with disapproval and cake crumbs.

‘Stuck-up cow,’ my mother said loudly, her vinyl high-heels squeaking with sale-price defiance as she bee-lined for the taut-bunned waiter behind the bar.

Smiling jovially, Julian was moving around the room, rubbing his hands together and briskly repeating the mantra ‘Isn’t this
fun
?’ I followed, grinning and nodding, my face glaciered into a Doris Day rapture of marital euphoria. It was like playing charades when sober.

I retreated as soon as I could to the garden to find a quiet place to throw up. This was awful. This was excrutiating. If we’d been on an aeroplane, it was a ‘Please Return To Your Seats, Extinguish Your Cigarettes And Put On Your Life Jackets’ kind of moment.

A hand tendrilled out of the dark, twined around my waist and dragged me into the garden shed. Well, it
used
to be a shed, but Julian had DIYed it into a little clematis-clad folly with mosaics and mock-Roman pillars. A hot, wet mouth was on mine.

‘What the hell … Oh God,’ I said, trying to kick-start my heart into beating again. ‘Julian’s here. In fact, everyone’s here …’

‘I know. He invited me. To DJ. Thought yer might be havin’ second thoughts, an’ well, I came by to persuade yer that yer first thoughts were better.’

Despite my feeble protestations, Zack proceeded to do just that with hands and tongue and cinnamon breath, spinning us into a cocoon of heat and skin and lust.

Which is exactly how Julian found us ten minutes later.

Getting back to those etiquette points; exactly what
is
the correct behaviour when your husband catches you with your teeth in the fly of another man? Spontaneous Combustion was the only appropriate reaction I could come up with at short notice.

Julian stood there, a chocolate fudge cake in his arms, sparklers fizzing around a marzipan bride and groom as his face caved in. He gasped, pain flooding in like the sea gushing into a scuttled boat. It was pointless lying. An erection cannot be hurriedly disguised in a snakeskin jockstrap. I looked up into my husband’s eyes with a mix of dread and relief.

‘I suppose when you file for divorce, this will be the first incident you’ll mention to the judge,’ I ventured.

Julian composed himself faster than an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. ‘Oh. I didn’t realize the invitation dress code read “Trousers Optional”.’

‘Jules … I …’

‘I believe, Rebecca, we’ve reached a turning point in our marriage.’

‘Julian, I’m … I’m leaving you.’

‘Oh … So does that mean the wedding waltz is off? … Happy Anniversary,’ he said, and hurled the chocolate fudge cake into my face.

Part Two
The Affair

19
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do – But Dividing The Book Collection? Unbearable

UNTIL MY HUSBAND
caught me in the arms of my lover at our wedding party, my only experience of hell had been the time I bumped into my prospective father-in-law at a nudist beach.

Julian’s reaction to my infidelity had been understandably Vesuvial. First the cake in the face, then, failing in his attempt to remove Zachary’s brain by pulling it through his nostrils, he flounced out of the party – leaving me with a house full of spellbound guests. I took the only course open to a woman in such a position and hid in the bathroom where immediate members of my family were less likely to mug me.

After I’d kissed the porcelain for a few hours and Kate and Anouska had smuggled Zachary over the garden wall, marshalled the guests out the door and
cleaned
up the worst of the debris (including my howling mother) I set about moving out – lock, stock and CD-ROM.

It was three a.m. when I heard Julian’s key in the lock. My intestines macraméd instantly. I stood stock still in the middle of the living room to face him for the traditional fusillade of crockery and recriminations. He appeared, half moons of grief beneath both eyes.

‘Funny,’ he said, tossing his car keys in the vague vicinity of the couch, ‘but I don’t remember our marriage vows saying, “Till Death Us Do Part …
Or Till Someone Younger Comes Along
”.’

‘Julian, I’m so sorry.’

‘Actually I knew you were going to leave me.’ He crouched down to peer tipsily into the cardboard box I’d been packing.

‘How?’

‘All the “Her” towels were missing from the linen press.’

‘That’s not true. I hadn’t planned it to happen this …’

‘True? True? I’m sorry, but I think that word should be excised from your puny vocabulary.’

The knot in my stomach was working its way up into my throat. I swallowed back tears. ‘It’s my fault, Jules. Not yours. Please don’t take it personally.’

‘Don’t take it personally! How can I
not
take it personally? You’re my
wife
, for Christ’s sake!’ Julian kicked over the cardboard box scattering my essential running-away items – the portable Dorothy Parker, the
non
-stick wok, the Patsy Kline albums. ‘So,’ he said, his voice dripping in sarcasm, ‘do you think this is what they mean by the “Honeymoon Period being over”? … But Jesus, Becky.’ He bent double as if from a flying tackle. ‘A black man! Did he have to be black?’

‘Oh,’ I commented, quietly squirrelling my possessions, ‘spoken by the great Civil Rights Lawyer.’

‘Believe me, Zachary Burne is the only person I’ve ever met who’s made me rethink my views on Capital Punishment.’ He rummaged disdainfully through my effects with the toe of his shoe. ‘He should rename that awful album of his “Desperately Seeking Brain Cells”.’