Altar Ego (32 page)

Julian bristled slightly. ‘She’s actually a very warm woman.’

‘Warm?’ I rolled on to my belly to watch him more carefully. ‘In bed, you mean?’

‘No … Well, yes, that too, I suppose.’

I tried to keep my voice casual. ‘Really? What was she like? … In bed?’

‘What?’ Julian fumbled with a mini-bar vacuum-packed tin of cashews. ‘Oh. Average. You know.’

‘Average … Oh. Well, what am
I
like in bed?’

‘You’re good. You know you are. Ouch!’ He dropped the tin. Nuts scatter-gunned across the acrylic carpet. He sucked the fingertip he’d caught on the serrated lip. ‘Look, can we please not have this conversation?’

I plumped up a punctured pillow. ‘So,
she’s
average and
I’m
good … But isn’t good just average?’

‘Do you think we could just have sex without Kate coming between us? … I mean, you brought her up in the first place …’

‘You mean
you
did. Silently. She’s always on your mind.’ Julian didn’t deny it. He looked away. ‘Stop saying nothing in such an awful tone.’

‘She’s on my mind because I’ve never cheated on anybody before. Yet here I am, having an affair with my wife. I’m finding it hard to be a Scarlet Man.’

‘Affairs aren’t that hard. In fact they’re quite easy …’ I said without thinking.

Julian shot me a witheringly injured look. ‘I know the downside of what it’s like to be cheated on, Rebecca. I had plenty of time to get used to it and it’s hideous. It’s time for Zachary Burne’s education to embrace the concept of oxymorons.’

‘Such as?’

‘Oh … “womankind” springs to mind.’

… And ‘liberal sensibilities’, I thought to myself, as Julian pored over his current case. He was prosecuting (I noticed in amazement) some unfortunate minicab driver who accidentally slapped his passenger across the face when attempting to get hold of her handbag to assist her in paying the fare.

‘The police are our friends now, are they?’ I asked sarcastically, leaning over his shoulder. ‘Next you’ll be
putting
men on death row, rather than getting them off it.’

‘Actually, our firm’s been approached by the Government of Trinidad to uphold the sentences on some of their more unpleasant murderers,’ he replied absent-mindedly. ‘We are considering it. Lots of money, of course.’

My stomach knotted. What had happened to my psychological Superman who fought for Truth, Justice and the Legal way? Kryptonited, that’s what. By Yours Truly. And I didn’t feel good about it. I mean, what was Clark Kent without the bionic underpants? Who was Bruce Wayne without the Caped Crusader? I’m afraid my legal eagle had turned Vulture like all the rest.

In fact, our clandestine days were over faster than either of us had planned when Kate extracted a confession – a voluntary admission obtained with a stun gun – from Julian. This meant an immediate career change for moi.

‘You are like,
so
fired,’ she spat when I arrived in the office one morning in August. In contrast to her bombast and bravado, I noted a forlorn dab of lipstick on her eye tooth.

‘Kate, we need to talk about this …’

‘I’d love to discuss this with you, I really would, but I don’t have anything to throw up into right now.’

‘Well just remember,’ I warned, clearing out my
desk
. ‘that I’m now a DE – Disgruntled Employee. Meaning that I’m soon to gun down several of my co-workers, starting with a certain loud-mouthed Aussie I know.’

‘Go plait your shit,’ she dismissed me eloquently.

‘Feel like having a powerless lunch?’ I suggested when Anouska opened her door an hour later.

‘You’re not working, doll? Anouska enquired, wrapping her kimono around her.

‘Um … no. I’m um … downsizing.’

‘Ah, so Kate finally found out about your adultery with your husband and sacked you?’ she decoded.

‘I don’t look on it as “sacked”. I look on it more as being self-employed. You should see me suck up to myself.’ I made a stab at joviality. ‘Not a pretty sight.’

Nor was confessing to Zachary. It would be the most nerve-racking event of my life, well, which didn’t involve gynaecologists. I was going to tell him, truly I was, but when I got back to his house that night, Zachary scooped me up in his arms and carried me into the bedroom, as though he’d just popped in from the Ottoman Empire.

‘Come with me to France, Becky, for the Amnesty gig,’ he said between caresses.

‘No. I’m not glamorous enough. The French don’t let you in if you’re ugly. Honestly. They run you over in their Citroëns.’

‘But you’re beautiful, Beck.’ He took my face in his hands and kissed my mouth, thawing my resolution with the tip of his tongue. The heat of his touch flowed over me, soaking into my skin like melted butter. Morals just couldn’t keep in that climate. He gave me an indolent smile. The air was charged with his aroma. His jeans fitted like a suntan. The trouble was Zack’s chocolate-milk skin. It was so moreish. And I was far from lactose-intolerant. My mouth watered insubordinately.

The truth is, I’m lousy at making decisions. When shopping, I always come home with the same pair of shoes in black
and
red. When dining out, I pick at the other person’s meal. I channel surf. I hedge bets. I like opera
and
rap music. Yet now I had to decide which man was going to be my ‘A’ and which my ‘B’ side.

But why should I
have
to choose? An ‘A’ side is not complete without a ‘B’ side. Right? When looked at that way … Okay, you had to squint quite hard, but why couldn’t I have both? Hell, men did. All the bloody time. Prostitutes for pleasure, concubines for service, wives for breeding – that’s the magical sexual sleight of hand men have performed for centuries. Why should I have to look a gift horse in any of its apertures? Why couldn’t love have a multiple-choice answer? I told myself that I wasn’t self-centred – I just had a larger capacity for pleasure. What harm could it do, I thought, as Zachary covered my body in kisses? How could I leave him? It would be a rat deserting a
floating
ship. If it was lust I was addicted to, at least it wasn’t as bad as heroin or cake. Right?

With his tongue in my navel it took me, oh, about 3.6 seconds to convince myself that the edifice of my crumbling life needed to be held up by the twin beams of Julian
and
Zack. And was that such a bad thing? To choose to be Courtney Love over Celine Dion? Why couldn’t women be selfish for a while? Hell, it was our turn. Why couldn’t we take lovers? And award ourselves huge salaries for doodling on a blotter? The secret was to just never, ever, ever let them know about each other.

But while it’s true that the stoning of adulteresses is generally frowned upon in the West, a ‘wanton’ woman is still universally condemned. Unless, that is, she’s seen to suffer.

And suffer I most surely would.

If Life were a slice of toast, mine was about to hit the linoleum, butter-side down.

In this world there are 1,100 ejaculations every second, with nearly one million conceptions every day – half of them unplanned.

When I realized that I was just one measly bit of maths in this staggering evolutionary equation, my problem should have paled. But it just loomed larger. So much for equality. What was the point of thinking like a man when my body was still thinking like a woman?

‘Jesus, doll,’ Anouska exclaimed, as I collapsed into the worn chair next to her after being told the result of my test. We were in a doctor’s shabby, beige-carpeted waiting room in Belsize Road, amid the gridlock of buggies and electronic wheelchairs and a United Nations of patients all jostling and jockeying for the next appointment. ‘Were you using contraceptives?’

‘Yes,’ I replied snarkily. ‘On all conceivable occasions.’ I bent my mouth towards her ear, whispering – ‘It’s just that one of these men should have a bumper sticker on his penis saying “Caution: Baby on Board”.’

‘Excuse me … But
you don’t know whose it is?
!’

Anouska’s fog-horned announcement succeeded where modern medicine had failed. Tubercular coughing gave way to a prurient silence, as patients swivelled in my cringing direction.

‘Not without DNA.’

‘Well, you must tell them, doll.’

‘Of course I will. After all, I knocked them up. I’d better do the right thing by them.’ I escaped down the ramp into the treacly August heat, dazed by more than just the sunshine. ‘Besides, one of them’s going to have to pay for the termination. I’m currently suffering from an ingrown income.’

‘Termination? Becky, you can’t. The miracle of life is stirring inside you.’

‘Hey, Kate is wearing high heels and mascara. I’ve already witnessed my miracle for the year.’

As it was, Anouska had a little retroactive birth control of her own to attend to. In her continued attempts at widowhood, she had drag-racing, paragliding, bicycle-abseiling and sky-surfing excursions to organize.

To aid my sexual kleptomania, both the men in my life were under the impression that I was staying with Anouska. I’d told them that she was taking life too easily – i.e. Darius’s – and needed to be watched. But approaching her car, which was sporting the customary literature affixed to the windscreen by a traffic warden, I decided I’d had enough terror for one day. I opted, instead, to walk to Zack’s house.

My shoes rang out on the concrete, scabbed with cracks and crevices. Designer jeeps crammed with horn-happy mothers late for pre-school runs, snaked down Abbey Road. My legs leaden, I plodded towards the famous Beatles recording studio, the zebra crossing outside it cluttered with Japanese tourists posing for polaroids. I thought at first I would not tell either man. But since I was developing penchants for pickle sandwiches, pedicures and holidays in the Hebrides (well, they’re the pregnancy cravings
I
got) – it would not take long for the penny to drop. But how to break the news?

Maybe next time I was vomiting and either man asked if there was anything he could do … I could simply reply ‘Um … how about carry our child to full term?’

Subtle, yet dramatic. And more direct than a sudden declaration that I’d be declining all bungee-jumping invitations for the next nine months.

A summer storm was boiling on the horizon. Breaking into a shambling trot, I reheared the dialogue in my head … It would be just like the baby in my belly; so easy to conceive, but so hard to deliver.

36
Ping! There Go Those Elastic Morals Again!

ALTHOUGH EMPLOYING ALL
the traditional anti-baby, pro-abortion techniques – like sharing with the father-to-be (or in this case, fathers-to-be) my newly discovered Islamic fundamentalist religious convictions –
the ones I wanted to share with my children
, both Zachary and Julian were euphoric at my embryonic news.

‘Isn’t there anything I can do?’ asked Zack, holding my hair back as I stared down the throat of the toilet for the tenth time that morning.

‘Um … How about carry our child to full term?’

‘
We’re having a baby?
’ Zack whooped like a Californian aerobics instructor.

‘Don’t get excited. I don’t think I’ll be keeping it.’

‘’Course we will, babe,’ he teased. He mussed my hair, before enquiring what I’d like for breakfast.
‘What
do you feel like?’ he insisted after carrying me back to bed.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Just listen to your uterus,’ Zack said. ‘It’ll tell you what it needs.’

I screwed up my eyes. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Well,’ he said, after a pause, ‘what’s it saying?’

‘Leonardo DiCaprio.’

He laughed, tickling my rib cage.

Julian responded by conforming to the well-established upper-class ritual of putting the embryo down for Eton.

For the next two weeks, I listed my worries and fears to both men. Firstly I did not want my body to be stolen by aliens and replaced with the body of Marlon Brando. Just trying to sit down on public transport would require torches and flares, as if landing a jet. I did not want to have to wear a ‘sheep dog’ – you know – the sort of bra that rounds ’em up and herds ’em in. I wouldn’t even be able to dull the humiliation with alcohol. Mind you, once the baby realized who her mother was, the poor kid would
need
a drink.

And then there was the birth. I told them both that I didn’t even want to do anything which felt
good
for thirty-three hours!

I told them both that I didn’t feel at one with the universe; I felt at one with the toilet bowl. I told them
both
that an abortion, statistically, carried less risk to the woman than going through pregnancy and birth. I told them that I didn’t feel guilty about wanting to have an abortion. I told them to stop making me feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I informed them that there was nothing earth-movingly romantic about the conception. I explained that the sperm probably hit the egg while I was killing cockroaches behind the cooker.

The one thing I didn’t tell them was that I had no bloody idea whatsoever which of them was the Dad.

With time running out I spent day after nauseating day procrastinating about procreating. I tried role-playing.

I tried playing the role of a demented parent – untangling the same mobile for thirteen years and arranging to have my salary paid directly to Osh Kosh. I tried playing the role of a demented non-parent: a vegetable in a nursing home with nobody to slip me morphine surreptitiously.

I tried playing the role of a decisive person.

But in the end nature decided for me. When the bleeding started, I rang the doctor. ‘Spotting,’ he called it euphemistically. ‘Are you cramping?’

‘No.’

But as the day wore on I felt bloated, enervated, peculiar. After the stabbing cramps took hold came the nag of backache. By midnight I was bleeding heavily
and
curled into a foetal ball around a hot-water bottle in Anouska’s spare bed.

At dawn Anouska drove me to the hospital, a sooty Victorian building in central London, for an ultrasound. The white-coated gynaecologist arrived about three centuries later.

The springs of the examination table seemed to mourn as they took my weight. The room smelt of corroding rubber, decades of damp fears and stale farts, with a noxious overlay of Domestos.