Altered States (15 page)

When the weather turned dull, and cooler, we headed for home. It was then that I found the house, suddenly alerted to the fact that we needed this excuse to justify occasional holidays, or for the children that we would have. I should not have seen it had I not got out of the car to buy a paper. Opposite a row of small traditional shops stood a seemingly delicate but doughty-looking house which announced itself for sale. This was confirmed by the newsagent. The owner, he said, had gone to live abroad and was willing to include the contents in the price.

‘What is this place called?’ I asked him, and was told that it was Shoreham-by-Sea. And the house was called Postman’s Cottage, which should satisfy Angela’s taste for authenticity. We inspected it together, and everything seemed acceptable, from the four square armchairs to the flowered cups and saucers in the kitchen cupboard. I bought it with unprofessional speed, cutting corners in a way I should never allow my clients to do, but it was worth it to see the thrill of ownership on Angela’s face. This new pleasure was not given exaggerated expression. ‘I’ll need new curtains,’ was all she said, as if she had earmarked the house for her own. In the end it was I who derived the most benefit from it, but I was prepared for this. It seemed a lucky chance, and consequently a lucky house. We returned to London contented, and with at last something to talk about.

Nevertheless, the world settled once again on my shoulders when we were back in London. I dreaded a return to that valetudinarian regime that had obtained until our recent departure. I wondered how the breach with Jenny would be repaired, for breach there had been; I wondered how Angela would occupy her time now that she was getting heavier and less keen to be seen in public, at least without me. She moped a bit, was withdrawn, remote from me in a way that I found puzzling. I could not reconcile her present lack of
interest with the fervour she had shown when we first met. I feared that her dissatisfaction would be brought to bear on our baby, who was to be a girl, provisionally called Helen Alice Margaret. I felt acutely sorry for this baby, who would not have an understanding mother, or at least a mother attuned to the good things in life. Angela seemed not to have taken in the full implications of her condition; she ate extravagantly or not at all, took no exercise, and spent most of her time indoors. Often she waited for me to come home before going out to do the shopping. I got used to carrying her basket. Her brooding air made her relatively mute, and trying to engage her in conversation over a dinner-table—for I insisted that we eat out fairly regularly—was hard work. She was not ill, she was not noticeably suffering, yet the only emotion I could feel for her was anxiety. This alone would have inhibited me, had my ardour not died at source.

One morning I entered the office and smelled an unfamiliar scent, something heavy, probably by Guerlain. I stood stock still, feeling my heartbeat and my pulse rate increase. I pushed open my door: Sarah was sitting on a corner of my desk reading the paper, her short black skirt riding up her thighs, her mane of crinkled red hair falling over one shoulder. No more fitting image of Luxuria could possibly be found. ‘Hi,’ she said, and folded the paper. I moved nearer to her, so that I could smell her hair. The waxy odour was less strong than I remembered it; today it smelled of something aromatic, a dressing of some kind. I drew it back over her shoulders and filled my hands with it. For a moment we gazed at each other, not speaking. Yet when she spoke her voice was cold.

‘I got your letter,’ she said. ‘And your wedding invitation.’

‘My letter?’

‘The one in which you so nobly said you couldn’t live alone.’

‘I think I said I was tired of waiting for you.’

‘Same thing, isn’t it?’

‘But you were never there. Night after night I tried to contact you, and even when I did you didn’t always feel you were ready to see me. And that bloody telephone, ringing and ringing. I was going mad, I think …’

‘So you got married.’ Her voice was level, but I could tell her anger was mounting.

‘If you had been there …’

‘Tell me, Alan, why should I have been there? What exactly did you offer?’

‘You could have had me.’ I was appalled at my ineptitude. I was not prepared for this conversation; it was precisely the conversation I never wanted to have. And it was my own stupidity that had led to this.

‘I could have had dozens like you,’ she said. I ignored this. I was sorry to have brought her down to my level.

‘And how’s dear Angela?’ she asked, picking up the paper again and scanning it.

‘Angela is pregnant.’ I had to say it, though I thought I should faint, as the paper was laid aside, and the icy eyes scanned my confusion.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’m thinking of following your example. Getting married, I mean.’

‘I see. Have you known him long?’

‘Yes. He’s a friend of Berthe’s father. An industrial chemist. Very wealthy. He’s asked me several times.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘De Leuze. Pierre de Leuze.’ She picked up her bag and strolled towards the door. ‘Goodbye, Alan.’

‘I must see you,’ I heard myself say. It was as if someone else had issued these words, in a wondering but considered tone. The words themselves came as something of a surprise to me, but not the feeling behind them. All my sorry desire,
now tinged indelibly with guilt and duplicity, was made plain to me, but was not to be ignored.

She halted by the door. ‘What were you suggesting?’

‘I’ll come to you this evening.’

‘I shan’t be here. I’m going to Paris to stay with Berthe. Maybe I’ll get engaged. I need a
man
, Alan, a
man
, someone to take care of me.’

‘Not me.’

She was silent.

‘I must see you,’ I repeated. ‘I’ll come to Paris. Meet me there. I’ll come next Monday and stay for a few days. Meet me there next Monday. At least give me that.’

She turned slowly, her hand on the doorknob. ‘Where will you be?’

‘At the George V,’ I said, again to my surprise. I had never stayed there in my life. I was opposed to it on principle, a luxury pad for the seriously rich. A moment’s consideration would have told me that my behaviour was unreal, and worse, ill-informed. And yet I had to have her. She had brought me nothing but sadness, was accountable for all my mistakes, would be accountable for the worst mistake of all, the one I was about to make, and yet there was no going back. I never even managed to tell her that I loved her, since that would have been an anticlimax, given the storm of dread and desperation that possessed me.

‘I’m not promising anything,’ she said.

‘Please don’t say any more. Please be at the George V next Monday. Please go now. I can’t endure seeing you like this …’

My sentence was destined to remain unfinished for tears, the kind of onrush of tears to which an infant is subject threatened to overwhelm me for a woman I now saw to be nothing out of the ordinary, a lazy, careless, rather difficult woman, neither clever nor generous, a woman whose very
presence was unsatisfactory, but whose absence was worse. I felt as if the whole conduct of my life was in disarray, as if I had turned my back on those sensible and pleasant advantages with which I had grown up, and turned to criminal activities. And yet I think that I was never meant to be a criminal. I loved the law, I loved my country and its now perhaps blurred traditions, I loved my mother and the memory of my father. Even my wife, whom I did not love, aroused pity and indulgence in my heart. I was prepared to forswear all this, to put myself beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour, perhaps never to be allowed back, simply because there was no mistaking the strength of my wholly irrational longing. Perhaps it was so strong because it was irrational, so very far removed from my own home life, with its timid surges of feeling. For some reason—odd, but then everything was odd—I saw Jenny’s face, the face that had changed from confidence to arid disappointment. A good woman, a woman who lived to serve others, and doomed to be unfulfilled. I did not want to be like that.

I heard Sarah’s steps clicking on the black and white tiles of the entrance, heard Brian’s delighted, ‘Well,
hello
!’ heard her uninflected ‘Hi,’ and buried my face in my hands. Seconds later he put his head round my door. Seeing me he looked alarmed. ‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘By the way I shall be in Paris next week. At the George V.’ He understood at once, but our long friendship kept him silent. ‘When will you be back?’ he asked. ‘Very soon,’ I told him. ‘If I can get back.’ This too he understood.

Angela was not so understanding when I told her that I had to meet a client in Paris. This was almost true: Sarah had once been a client. On the other hand, one more falsehood was neither here nor there.

‘You can’t leave me alone,’ she protested.

‘You’re only five months pregnant.’

‘Six, actually. Well, six and a half.’

‘You mean …?’

‘I didn’t know at first.’

‘And you said nothing?’

‘I thought it best.’

‘You could ring Jenny,’ I said weakly. ‘Ask her to keep you company.’

‘She said something about going to Dorset. Humphrey wants to see those two old women.’

‘Come on, darling. You’ll be fine. I’ll only be gone a night.’ I was willing to halve my pleasure in the interests of morality. ‘I’ll be back before you notice I’ve gone.’

This might even have been true. But if she had begged me to stay I should have stayed. This did not happen. She shrugged her annoyance and went to bed. Throughout that sleepless night I silently begged her to prevail on me. Then I too gave up, as I also wanted to, and got out of bed to drink glass after glass of water, as if I were consumed by thirst.

As I rehearsed this epochal scene my thinking became magical, taking no account of actual circumstances. In my projection of it everything would serve my purpose, which was undefined but not on that account to be ignored. I would arrive in Paris a free man, having left in abeyance a wife to whom I would return by the simple expedient of reinhabiting the body of which I had taken temporary leave. My wife, or rather my erstwhile wife, would, like the dolls in
Coppélia
, be brought out of her temporary suspension, which would obtain during the period of my absence, by the very fact of my renewed presence. I would arrive in Paris at about six o’clock, having caught a plane at about five. I did not take into account the time difference, since time was also there to serve my purpose. Some faint uneasiness clouded this part of the proceedings but I dismissed it as nugatory; if obliged to I
would adjust. I would take a taxi to the hotel, inspect my room, find it more than satisfactory, shower, change my shirt, and order a drink. Sarah, I imagined, would not be with me before nine; as she was staying with the Rigauds I imagined that she would be obliged to eat dinner with them. Whether or not this were true, I had the hour of nine fixed in my mind. This would give me time to take a nostalgic stroll and no doubt eat something myself, very little, since at nine o’clock I would order chicken sandwiches and champagne from room service. Thus everything would be civilised, in sharp contrast to the image I still had of myself peering through the letter-box in Paddington Street. The rest of the evening and the night remained a blank in my mind, but they would be memorable. When I returned to London it would be with a feeling of completion, of triumph, and thus renewed I should be able to shoulder my burdens once again.

My first brush with reality occurred on the plane. I was seated next to a man whose terrible agitation disturbed even the whisky in my glass. I stole a glance at him, unwilling to involve myself in his dilemma, but there was no ignoring the fact that he was either ill or in the grip of a nightmare. He was a man of about my own age, dressed in a cheap raincoat and childish-looking brown shoes: those two items, however, were the only signs of normality about him. His eyes were tightly closed and his fair-skinned face was a dusky red and beaded with sweat. From time to time a low moan escaped him and he clutched his briefcase convulsively, leaving damp handprints on the leather.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked reluctantly.

He opened his eyes and turned his head minimally in my direction, as if fearful of movement.

‘Phobia,’ he gasped.

‘Claustrophobia?’ I enquired sympathetically.

‘Travel. Motion.’

‘You mean you’re frightened of travelling?’

‘Petrified.’

‘But there’s no need. We’ll be landing in ten minutes, and then you’ll be all right.’

‘No. I have to get on the bus.’

‘The bus is as bad as the plane?’

‘Worse. No, not worse. As bad.’

‘Where do you have to get to?’

By way of reply he handed me a card bearing the name of a hotel in the rue d’Assas.

‘What happens there?’

‘They come and collect me.’

Who ‘they’ were I did not seek to ascertain; it was their job to look after him. We were both silent for a short interval, but when the plane gave a preliminary judder he clutched my arm. Unthinkingly, naturally, I gave his hand a pat.