Elegance and Innocence (13 page)

And there, in the clean, white, untouched room, we tore at each other’s clothes, grabbing and pulling, twisting the perfect sheets, shattering the silence.

When it was over, we dressed again, quickly, without looking at one another, and walked back into the safe neutrality of the park.

And, there, under the sheltering boughs of a chestnut tree, an hour after we made love, he told me that he had been thinking … that when he had broken up with his previous girlfriend, it was because he suspected … that he was afraid he might be … well, that there might be something wrong with him.

We didn’t speak for weeks after that. The play transferred into the West End. I left my boyfriend and slept on the sofa in a girlfriend’s flat. But every day I thought of him, of how he’d listened to me and held me and how peaceful and serene the cool white world was where he lived.

And then he rang.

We met in the same outdoor café, only this time we moved inside where it was warm. After an embarrassed silence, I started to say, fumbling for words, how I thought we could probably still be friends, when he reached across the table and took hold of my hands.

His eyes were feverish and the words came spilling out on top of one another, in a disjointed torrent I struggled to keep up with. Never before had he been so animated, so passionate, or alive. He had just been afraid, he said, he
could see that now. For so long – too long – he’d been on his own in the apartment; day after day, just waiting for something to happen, for some sign. He’d been overwhelmed by depression, suicidal even and hadn’t known what to do. Which way to go. The men … he’d tried, but it had repulsed him. He’d been disgusted. Ashamed. But it had all been just a red herring, nothing more than a phantom. The truth, the real truth, was that he had just been afraid to love anyone.

But that was over.

Now he loved me.

He held my hands tighter. He’d tried to forget me, but he couldn’t. I haunted him, whispered to him, thoughts of me swam around in his head day and night.

He pulled me closer and looked into my eyes. I’d never know how desperate, how lonely, how hopeless it had all been. Or how I’d changed him. Changed him to the very core.

Laughing, suddenly euphoric, he showered my face with kisses and told me how he knew, as soon as he saw me in my bright red dress, that I was the one for him. And how all he wanted to do was to help me, take care of me, look after me.

‘Please, Louise! Rumple the bed sheets! Pile the sink high with dirty dishes! Hang your red dress from the centre of the ceiling in my cold, empty bedroom! But most of all stay.’

I smiled, leant forward and kissed him.

He seemed the kindest, most gentle person I had ever known.

‘You look tired,’ Mrs P says, breaking the silence between us.

I stare up at the ceiling. ‘I’m not sleeping very well,’ I say at last.

She expects me to go on but I don’t. I’m too tired to talk, too tired to do anything but curl up on the dreaded daybed and fall asleep. There’s a tiny spider attempting to scale the elaborate moulding in the corner; I watch as it slips back over the same few inches, again and again.

‘Why do you think you’re sleeping so badly?’ Her voice is frustrated, tense. I feel for her, having to play such an active role in our session. She must’ve imagined herself as a kind of female Freud, curing patients of deep-seated traumas and neuroses. But instead she gets to watch me take a nap.

‘My husband … we’re …’ I yawn and force my eyes to stay open. ‘We’re falling apart. The whole thing is falling apart. And I can’t sleep any more when he’s there.’

‘What does that mean? “Falling apart?”’

I shift onto my side and pull my knees up towards my chest. I can’t get comfortable. ‘It means the glue that used to stick us together isn’t there any more.’

‘And what glue is that?’

The answer flashes in my brain almost instantly, but I think a moment longer because it’s not the one I’m expecting.

‘Fear,’ I say.

‘Fear of what?’

The spider tires again. And fails.

‘Fear of being alone.’

She crosses her legs. ‘And what’s wrong with being alone?’

The spider has given up. I watch as it descends slowly from the ceiling on an invisible silk thread.

‘I don’t know. I used to think everything was wrong with being alone. That I would die, kind of literally implode with loneliness. But lately, lately I’m not so sure.’

‘Louise, do you love your husband?’ Her voice is challenging, hard.

I’m quiet for a long time. A gust of wind blows through the open window and the spider wavers, dangling precariously. It couldn’t be more fragile.

‘Love isn’t the point. As a matter of fact, it only makes it more confusing. It’s not a matter of loving or not loving. I’ve changed. And it isn’t enough just to be safe any more.’

‘And is that what you were before? Safe?’

‘That’s what I thought. But now I see that I was afraid.’ I close my eyes again; I’m getting a headache. ‘It’s like that thing, that thing that when you know something, you can’t ever go back and pretend you don’t know it. You can never go back to the way you were before.’

‘But you can move forward,’ she reminds me.

Yes, I think. But at what cost?

Weeks later, I come home from work to find my husband sitting, still in his overcoat, on the living room sofa. He looks dreadful, as he has done for weeks. By some strange, sick law of nature, as I become more attractive, he declines. It’s as if only one of us is allowed to be appealing at a time. His eyes are ringed with dark circles, his hair wild and unkempt and he seems to have forgotten that razors exist. He should be gone, at the theatre getting ready to go on, but he’s not. He’s here instead.

‘Oh!’ I say when I see him sitting there, staring into the middle distance. ‘You’d better go, hadn’t you?’

But he just looks at me, like some feral animal that’s been trapped in the house by accident.

I should feel concern, or worry, but the truth is I’m more irritated than anything else. We have an unspoken agreement, an arrangement that each of us has been honouring for months now: I go to work in the day and he’s gone in the evening when I get home. He’s now on my time and I don’t want him here.

But I sit down anyway, in the green chair, and wait.

‘We need to talk,’ he says at last.

Here it is; the conversation we’ve been avoiding for months. I feel sick and yet strangely exhilarated, calm even. ‘Fine,’ I agree. ‘You start.’

He stares at me for another long moment and when he speaks, his voice is accusatory. ‘You’re different. You’ve changed. And I feel like I’ve done something wrong but I
don’t know what it is. What have I done wrong, Louise? What is it that I’ve done?’

I take a deep breath. ‘You’re right; I have changed but it’s all been good. Surely you can see that?’

‘All I see is that you’re more concerned with the way you look.’

‘But that’s good. I look better than ever before – you should be proud of me.’

‘I liked you better before. You were easier to be around.’

‘You mean less demanding.’

‘I mean less vain,’ he contradicts. ‘Less self-obsessed.’

It’s starting to get ugly. I can feel myself baulking at every word he speaks. It’s hard to believe that this is the same man that only six months ago, I would’ve given my right arm to please.

‘You know what, people are supposed to change,’ I remind him. ‘It’s a good thing. You’re just used to me not giving a shit what I look like. The truth is, you like me better when I’m depressed. Well, I don’t want to be depressed any more. I don’t want to spend my whole life hiding and feeling ashamed and apologizing for myself. I have a right to look good and to be happy. And I have a right to change!’ I’m shaking, my whole body quivering with the force of my declaration. ‘Anyway, the problem isn’t about me changing. I think the real problem is that we don’t really want the same things any more.’

‘Like what?’ He sounds crushed.

‘Like … I don’t know … everything. I mean, we’re not going to have children, right? So what are we going to do? Just sit around in this flat of ours, hunting for the perfect lampshade and growing old?’

‘Is that really so bad?’

He just doesn’t get it. ‘Yes! Yes, it is that bad! Can’t you see that it’s bad for us to be sitting around here like two pensioners with no surprises, no passion, no hope, just waiting to die? I mean, doesn’t that strike you as bad?’

For a moment it looks as if he’s going to cry, and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse. ‘Is that really the way you see our life together? Is that really what you think? That we’re like two old pensioners?’

I know I’m hurting him. But if we don’t speak honestly now, we never will. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I think.’

He sits, motionless, cradling his head in his hands. Silence stretches out before us, vast and insurmountable. Then suddenly, quite suddenly, he pulls himself onto his feet and I watch in horror as he crosses the floor and kneels in front of me.

‘I should have done this earlier, Louise. I’m so sorry, I’ve been very selfish.’ He’s looking up at me, his eyes two enormous pools. I feel sick.

He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a tiny, clear plastic bag.

‘Perhaps we haven’t been very passionate … I’m not very good at showing you how important you are to me.
I’m sorry. I’d like to make it up to you.’ And he puts the little plastic bag into my lap.

There, floating amidst the emptiness, are three tiny coloured stones. It’s a surreal moment; I can’t quite figure out how we went from discussing our life together to this bizarre, make-shift proposal.

‘I got them from Hatton Garden. We can have them made into a ring.’

I should say something – act surprised or pleased, but instead I just stare at the packet, unable to form any cohesive thought other than shock and dismay.

‘Louise, I’m here … on my knees before you. I know we’ve been having difficulties. And …’ I have the uneasy feeling he’s rehearsed this; he’s looking down now, taking a pregnant pause. ‘And I want you to have this, to know that I love you, that I’m sorry.’

He looks up at me again.

It’s my cue. My head is pounding; say something nice, something conciliatory, it screams at me. But when I speak, my voice is cold and flat.

‘Exactly
what
do you want me to have? Some coloured stones in a bag?’

He blinks at me.

‘This isn’t a ring, is it?’

‘Yes, but … but it could be.’

‘But it isn’t. What kind of stones are these?’

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know the names.’

And then I find myself doing something very unexpected; I hand the bag back to him. ‘Why don’t you get up,’ I say.

He stares at me in amazement. ‘Louise, please!’

‘Please what?’ I’m suddenly overwhelmingly angry. I want him off the floor. I don’t want to be a part of this charade anymore. It’s offensive. All of it; the stones, the speech. ‘Why are you doing this?’ I demand. ‘Why are you doing this now, after all this time?’

‘I … I’m doing it because I don’t want you to leave.’

‘Why?’ I persist. ‘What difference does it make whether I stay or go?’

He just kneels there, staring at me.

‘Be honest, you don’t really want me, do you? I mean, it’s not like you want to
touch
me, do you?’

‘I do want to touch you,’ he says, his eyes not meeting mine.

‘Then why don’t you?’

But he just shakes his head, over and over.

And I snap.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I shout, my voice so loud and shrill it doesn’t even sound like it’s coming from me. ‘Just tell me! Say it! Why?’

‘Because,’ he whispers, his hands trembling as they cover his face, ‘I cannot trust myself when you’re gone.’

My husband and I are having a ‘trial separation’.

Colin is looking for someone to rent his spare room. I tell him that person is me and he blinks in surprise and asks, wide-eyed, if there’s anything he can do. No, I say, there’s nothing to be done. And of that, I’m sure.

It’s been months now – months of conversations, arguments, silences, tears. We have ‘given it one more week’ again and again and again. It’s like trying to amputate a limb with a spoon.

We make it to the end of the month, to the end of another excruciating month, and then I move out.

It’s a Tuesday. My husband offers to help me pack my bags.

‘I’m not going on holiday,’ I tell him, repulsed and amazed that he can imagine us standing side by side, taking things off hangers and folding them into piles. He stares at me, numbly.

‘I’m leaving you,’ I explain, saying the words slowly and
loudly, the way you speak to a deaf person. ‘This is me packing my bags and leaving you.’ But he just blinks.

‘I’ll pay for the cab,’ he says. He reaches for his wallet and examines the notes. I watch as he calculates in his head how much he can spare. He puts back the twenty for later. And I want to hit him, to cry, to tear through the fabric of our life together like it’s a badly painted backdrop and get to the point at last. He fumbles. Pulls out a tenner. And we’ve been here before; we’ve been right here, in this same, exact spot for a very long time.

I let him put the money on the table. I turn and walk into the bedroom and take down my suitcase, the one I brought to England when I thought I was going to be a famous actress, and start filling it with clothes.

My husband goes out for a walk and when he comes back I’m gone.

Colin lives with his flatmate Ria, a glassblower and gallery manager, in South London, beyond the urban chic of Brixton. Gone are the exclusive cafés and lunchtime concerts of Westminster, replaced by the gaudy splendour of the Streatham Mega Bowl and the late night Mecca Bingo parlour.

The cab driver helps me to unload my bags and haul them up the front steps. I ring the bell and the door opens to reveal Colin in his bathrobe, hair wet from the shower and Madonna blaring in the background.

I stare at the misshapen collection of bags, suddenly too overwhelming and unwieldy to move. ‘I’m sorry, Col. What am I doing? What have I done?’

He wraps an arm gently around my shoulders. ‘Come inside. Sit down. And I’ll make us a nice, hot cup of tea.’