How to Be Good (6 page)

‘David, I just can't see how we're going to get out of this mess.'

‘What are you talking about now?'

I try to get the words out – the words I have used once, and
retracted only this morning – but luckily they won't come, and instead I burst into tears, and sob and sob and sob, while David leads me out of the café and into the street.

 

It could well be that I am going mad; or, on the other hand, that I am simply confused and unhappy; or, on the third hand, that I know exactly what I want but cannot bring myself to do it because of all the pain it would cause, and the tension between those two states of being makes me want to explode. But when David touches me in that way, with tenderness, with love and concern, it all dribbles away to nothing, and I just want to be with him and my kids for the rest of my life. I don't want to touch Stephen, I don't want to row about what David may or may not have said to other people, or what he certainly said to Molly and Tom. I just want to do my job during the day, watch dinosaurs in the evening, sleep with David at night. Nothing else matters. All I need to do is hold on to this feeling, and I'll be fine.

We go and sit in the car for a little while, and David lets me cry.

‘I can't let this go on,' he says.

‘It won't. This is the end of it.'

‘Do you want to tell me what's been going on?'

Typical David. Typical man. Something has to have been ‘going on' for someone to be in this kind of state . . . Except, of course, he's right, and something has been going on, something that has, without any shadow of a doubt, contributed to my recent unhappiness. Suddenly, what with the dinosaur decision, and David being nice to me, and this conviction I have that the tears mark the end of all this, it seems very clear to me what I should do and say.

‘David . . . I've been seeing someone.'

I tell him because I know I'm not seeing someone any more, and because I know in my own head what I want, and because I know that this will communicate itself to David. It doesn't occur to me for a moment that for David my confession marks the beginning of something, not the end of something, and just because he has known me for twenty-five years it doesn't mean that he knows me
or understands me now. He's quiet for a moment, and then he says, ‘Can you come straight home tonight?'

‘Yes. Sure. Of course. We'll talk about it then.'

‘There's nothing to talk about. But I want to do something about Molly's eczema, and I need you to look after Tom.'

 

I play a game with myself, just to see what it feels like. The game goes like this: I am not sitting in the kitchen of the marital home watching my son doing his homework, but in the kitchen of a small flat nearby. In the game, this is where I now live, after my separation. Molly is not here because at the moment she is refusing to talk to me; she blames me for what has happened (David must have given her a very skewed account of events), and every time I try to talk to her she turns her back. David's terrible joke about dividing the family down the middle has turned out to be a prosaic and obvious prediction.

In some ways, this game is instructive. Why, for example, have I chosen to imagine this kitchen as a different kitchen? Why, in other words, do I find it so difficult to imagine that I would be the one who stays put in the event of domestic meltdown? It's not just because I'm the guilty party (although there are mitigating circumstances, and I'm not as guilty as all that, and my marriage is brutal and degrading, sort of, although admittedly it's a gentle, middle-class version of brutality and degradation); it's because I am the breadwinner. David takes the kids to school; David makes their tea, and supervises their homework; David picks them up from the homes of their friends, friends I have never met. If David and I split up, then my departure would cause minimal disruption, whereas if he left, I don't know how we would manage. I'm the man. I'm the daddy. Not because I have a job, but because David doesn't, not really, and is therefore the primary carer. That is why it is so easy for me to imagine moving out – because fathers always move out. And that's why it's so easy to imagine Molly not talking to me – she would never choose me over David, and in any case, a daughter always refuses to speak to her father after she has discovered he's been having an affair. There's all that stuff that goes on, the whole
Freudian thing. Is it too much to suggest that Molly is actually sexually jealous of me?

‘Tom?'

‘Yo.'

‘Do you think of me as your mum or your dad?'

‘What?'

‘Don't even think about it, just say the first thing that comes into your head.'

‘Mum.'

‘Are you sure? You didn't have to think for a couple of seconds because you were confused?'

‘No. I think of you as my mum, and Dad as my dad.'

‘Why?'

‘Mum, I'm really busy, OK?' And he shakes his head sadly.

 

Molly has always suffered from eczema, ever since she was very little. She gets it everywhere – hands, arms, legs, stomach – and no amount of creams or diets or homeopathic remedies have managed to affect it. This morning, before she went to school, I applied a very powerful and probably harmful steroid cream to her hands, which were covered in painful-looking cracks. But when she comes home, she runs down the hall and thrusts her hands at me, and there's not a trace of it anywhere. I lift up her fleece, and it's the same story on her stomach; she shows me the backs of her legs, and there's nothing there either. And of course my stomach turns over when I hear Molly and David come in, and of course I'm terrified about what this evening might hold; but all any of us can talk about is what has happened to Molly's ugly red sores. (And if Molly's eczema is more important than my adultery, then what is the point of adultery in the first place?)

‘That's amazing,' I say.

‘He just touched it and it went away,' says Molly. ‘I could see it go.'

‘He didn't just touch it,' says David. ‘He used a cream.'

‘He didn't, Daddy. I was watching. He didn't do anything. He just touched it.'

‘With the cream.'

‘He just touched it, Mummy.'

‘Who just touched it?'

‘DJ GoodNews.'

‘Ah. DJ GoodNews. I should have known. Is there nothing DJ GoodNews can't do?'

‘He happened to mention that he was good with eczema,' says David. ‘So I thought it was worth a try.'

‘Backs and eczema. That's quite an unusual combination of specialisms.'

‘He did Daddy's headache as well,' says Molly.

‘What headache?' I ask David.

‘Just a . . . just a normal headache. I just happened to mention that I had one, and he . . . massaged my temples. It was good.'

‘So, head, eczema, back. He's a real wizard, isn't he? Another two hundred quid?'

‘And you don't think this is worth it?'

I snort, although I don't know what the snort is intended to convey. I don't know why I'm being like this. I would have paid double that to make Molly better, but the opportunity to snipe is always irresistible, whatever the circumstances.

‘You should go, Tom,' says Molly. ‘It's great. You go all warm.'

‘That's the cream,' says David. ‘He did that with my back.'

‘He didn't use any cream. Daddy, why do you keep saying he used cream when he didn't?'

‘You couldn't see what he was doing.'

‘I could. Anyway, I know what cream feels like. It feels creamy . . .'

‘Der!' says Tom. (For the benefit of those unfamiliar with apparently meaningless pre-teen monosyllables ‘Der!' is completely different from ‘Doh!' As I understand it, the latter is an admission of stupidity on the part of the speaker, whereas the former implies strongly that someone else is stupid. The former, incidentally, is accompanied by a rather unattractive face – screwed-up eyes, protruding teeth – intended to illustrate said stupidity.) Molly ignores him. ‘. . . And his hands didn't feel creamy at all.'

Something weird is going on here, because David won't let this drop; it is clear that this conversation will continue until Molly has denied the evidence of her own senses.

‘That is complete nonsense, Molly. Read my lips: He . . . Was . . . Using . . . Cream.'

‘Does it matter?' I ask him mildly.

‘Of course it matters!'

‘Why?'

‘She's fibbing. And we don't like fibbing, do we, Molly?'

‘Yeah,' says Tom, unpleasantly. ‘Fibber! Liar!'

Molly bursts into tears, shouts ‘It's not fair! I hate you all!' and runs up to her bedroom; and thus the first GoodNews we have had in weeks is deftly turned into yet another source of upset and difficulty.

‘Well done, David. Again.'

‘She shouldn't tell fibs, should she, Dad?'

‘He was using cream,' says David, to no one in particular. ‘I saw him.'

 

David apologizes to Molly (not, I have to say, because he wants to, but because I suggest that it would be the mature and fatherly thing to do), and Tom apologizes to Molly, and Molly apologizes to us, and we settle down again. And this, at the moment, is what constitutes peace in our time: the two hours between the argument about the quack doctor and his creams and the discussion about my affair with another man and whether it constitutes the end of my marriage.

‘Shall we talk now?' I say to David when the kids are in bed.

‘What about?'

‘About what I told you at lunchtime.'

‘What do you want to say about it?'

‘I'd have thought you'd want to say something.'

‘No.'

‘You just want to leave it at that?'

‘I don't want to leave it at anything. I'm just presuming that you'll be moving out in the next couple of days.' There's something different about David, but I'm not sure what. I was certain that
he'd do his David thing, which would involve a lot of ranting, some raving, several million caustic remarks and an awful lot of contempt directed towards Stephen. But there's nothing like that; it's almost as if he doesn't care any more.

‘The affair's over. As of this second.'

‘I don't know about that. But I do know that no one asks Elvis Presley to play for nothing.'

I feel sick and panicky, and now I don't understand his words or his tone.

‘What does that mean?'

‘It's what Colonel Tom Parker told the White House.'

‘Please talk to me properly.'

‘Nixon's people phoned up Colonel Tom Parker and asked him to play for the President at the White House. And Parker said, you know, “Fine, but how much will we be getting?” And Nixon's aide said, “Colonel Parker, nobody asks for money for a private performance for the President”, and Parker said, “I don't know about that, but no one asks Elvis Presley to play for nothing.” '

‘I don't understand! Please stop this! It's important!'

‘I know. It's just . . . you know, I was reminded of that story, so I thought I'd pass it on. It's my way of saying that what you do or what you want doesn't really count for anything. You're the president, I'm the King. I'm in charge, you're on your bike. Off you go. Thank you and goodbye.'

‘You don't mean that.'

I say this even though I know that he almost certainly does. He's that sort of man. Maybe when it comes down to it, this is the only way in which men in our particular postal district are unreconstructed. They know about changing nappies and talking about feelings and women working and all the basics, but he would still rather close things off right now than admit any possibility of doubt or confusion or hurt, however much it costs him, however much he is eaten up by what I have done. And he told me once, and I'm sure it will come up . . .

‘Why don't you think I mean it? Don't you remember? We talked about it?'

‘I remember.'

‘So.'

We were in bed, and we'd just made love – we had Tom but not Molly, and I wasn't pregnant, so this must have been some time in 1992 – and I asked David if the prospect of having sex with me and no one else but me for the rest of his life depressed him. And he was uncharacteristically reflective about it: he said that it did get him down sometimes, but the alternatives were too horrible to contemplate, and anyway he knew that he would never be able to tolerate anything other than monogamy in me, so he could hardly expect indulgence for himself. So of course we ended up playing the game that all lovers play at some time or another, and I asked him whether there were any circumstances in which he would forgive me an infidelity – a drunken one-night stand, say, followed the morning after by immediate and piercing remorse. He pointed out that I never got drunk, and I'd never had a one-night stand in my life, so it was hard to imagine this particular circumstance; he said that if I were unfaithful, it would be for other reasons, and those other reasons he felt would spell trouble – trouble he wouldn't want to think about. I very rarely credit David with any perspicacity, but I take my hat off to him now: I wasn't drunk. It wasn't a one-night stand. I have been sleeping with Stephen for all sorts of other reasons, every one of which spells trouble.