The Boy Who Fell to Earth (22 page)

‘Lucy. I’m so sorry for abandoning you. The truth is, I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you. And Merlin. And I want to dedicate the rest of my life to making it up to you. I want you back, darling. Desperately.’

Part Three: Jeremy

14

The Born-again Human Being

I ASCERTAINED THAT
I hadn’t wet my pants so, all in all, I was pretty proud of my response. Blood beat in my ears. I looked at my ex-husband for a silent eternity: twenty seconds, a decade – who could tell? It was the same Jeremy, the same sharp cheekbones, firm jaw, blue eyes just deep enough to drown in and the dashing smile of a gambler who plays for high stakes. The tailored shirt and black trousers, the obligatory Rolex, yes, he had everything …
bar the bolts sticking out from the side of his neck
. I reminded myself that this was the monster who’d abandoned me all those years ago. Tearing my eyes away from his, I tried to speak, but my lips felt Novacained.

My only survival technique was to revert to my default setting of caustic flippancy. ‘I should have guessed you were in the vicinity, as all the neighbourhood animals are running around in circles,’ I finally commented, though my heart was percussing wildly against Archie’s shirt. ‘What do you want?’ I had grown strong enough by now to absorb any blow.

‘I behaved appallingly.’ Jeremy said this gravely, like he’d just disclosed that he had testicular cancer. There was that voice, familiar in a strange way, strange in a familiar way. We stared at each other across the abyss. He then launched into a prepared speech. ‘Men should be made to sign emotional pre-nups. Grooms are always so worried about finances, but what about feelings? … It’s
feelings
a woman is banking on. If only you’d made me sign an emotional pre-nup, things would probably have been fine:
I promise to keep trying to make you laugh. I promise to keep laughing at your jokes … I promise to tell you all the things I love about you, daily, starting with your lovely laugh … I promise to never leave you in your hour of need … I promise to be a good father
.’

My face froze in a rictus of incredulity. I rolled my eyes so high I could see my own hairline. ‘So, you expect me to believe that, after all these years, you’ve suddenly changed?’

Jeremy’s brow wrinkled like the skin on cooling custard. ‘I
have
changed. I can’t believe what I put you through. I had to come and tell you how I feel.’

‘How you feel? You don’t emote, Jeremy. The closest you get to showing your feelings is when you say “This gave much pleasure to 100 per cent of our focus group.”’

‘That’s the old Jeremy! I appreciate it’s a little late in the day to realize these things, but I’ve learnt that career and work are not everything.’

‘Spoken by a man who has been known to call out at the point of orgasm, ‘Oh God! The Dow just went down 2 per cent. Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!’

‘Yes, I
was
like that. I admit it. But I now know that friends and family are more important than anything else.’

‘Great! Let’s celebrate. I suggest we invite all your friends … I’ll book a table for one, shall I?’

‘My father died,’ Jeremy said suddenly. His voice was thickened by buried emotion.

‘Oh,’ I said, the wind momentarily taken out of my vitriolic sails. ‘I’m sorry.’

Jeremy discarded the bouquet and slumped down on to the low brick wall separating my dilapidated terrace from the gleamingly renovated abode next door. ‘I loved my father, Lucy. But I do partially blame my parents for our marriage break-up. If they’d shown me the love and affection I was owed, if they’d taught me how to communicate, I would never have abandoned you. But my parents preferred their canines to their kid,’ he said bitterly. ‘They kept the dogs at home and sent me off to that high-class kennel called Eton. After Merlin’s diagnosis, well, I just didn’t have the emotional maturity to cope. It’s too late to tell my father how I feel.’ He hung his head despondently. ‘But I’ve told my mother. She’s desperately sorry too. She wants to see you both again, so badly. As do I.’

He looked up at me then with such pleading candour that I momentarily dropped my guard and lowered myself on to the rickety wall beside him.

‘I just drifted into fatherhood, a boat without a rudder. Then panicked and dived overboard and swam like crazy for the shore. And I’ve been shipwrecked all these years.’ He put his head in his hands.

I wanted to believe him, but the divorce lay between us like a big, black bruise. ‘
Your divorce settlement will be fair and equitable … Now bend over
,’ pretty much summed up the experience. Instead of putting a comforting arm around his grieving shoulders, I performed a slow handclap. ‘Very touching, Jeremy. Almost a Victorian novel. By the way, even if you’re certain you’re included in your father’s will, it’s
considered
a tad rude to arrive at his funeral with a removal van, you know.’

Jeremy’s red-rimmed eyes sought mine. ‘Oh my God. You really think so little of me? Well, who can blame you?’ He sighed bleakly. ‘I behaved disgracefully. My mother has told me all about Merlin’s problems. It’s not his fault that he can’t make the right emotional choices and responses. I’ve been reading up on Asperger’s. His cognitive empathy – being able to understand what others are feeling – is impaired, I know, but experts say it’s a—’

I raised my hand. ‘Um, I’d like to put in a request to interrupt your soliloquy, Jeremy. This is a warning that I will be getting a word in within the next few minutes, and that those words will be
I don’t give a damn what you think
.’

Jeremy persevered, regardless. ‘But it’s clear to me that Merlin inherited the condition from my side of the family. Oh yes. We are very adept at emotional blindness in the Beaufort clan. Just look at my father. He never once told me he loved me, do you know that?’ he groaned miserably. ‘Maybe he had undiagnosed Asperger’s? Who knows? But with him as a role model, is it any wonder I’ve been such a terrible father myself? Which is why I’ve come back to help. Merlin will benefit from intensive support within the family and professional input, which I can pay for. And, most important of all, a father’s love. It’s the least I can do.’

I looked at my ex with a mix of astonishment and suspicion. In the last decade, asking my husband for money had been like asking a corpse for a pint of blood and yet here he was offering a cash haemorrhage. ‘What do you want?’ I demanded coldly.

‘Forgiveness. Another chance. Merlin needs to learn to build on his core social skills. And so do I. My dad dying,
well,
it forced me to rethink my life. An epiphany, I suppose you could call it. I have vowed to become a good father. And sworn to stay faithful to that promise.’

’Huh! Which is more than you did to me … How
is
Tawdry Hepburn? How did her career on American cable pan out? I did see her on some cooking show recently. She looks more animated in still photographs actually. Too much Botox, I suppose? Still, Audrey does have two very impressive assets, which she flaunts in every programme. I keep hoping one tit will flop into the frying pan. Braised breast of tartlet. Do you think, if it was important to the integrity of the show, that she would ever consider keeping her clothes
on
for an entire episode?’

My marriage was now only visible to me in painful flashes of memory; most of the time it was just a blur of gloomy shapes and noises. But the pain of Jeremy’s betrayal was suddenly seared into my consciousness once more.

‘It’s over with Audrey.’ Jeremy looked down at his hands and his shoulders drooped.

‘Let me guess. You got bimbo burn-out,’ I commented belligerently. ‘Can’t be helped when you shack up with a girl whose sun protection factor is higher than her IQ.’

‘It’s just that, well, Audrey didn’t share my beliefs. When I was younger I was looking for this magical meaning of life. I thought it was success, social status, financial rewards. But, in truth, it’s very simple. The meaning of life is to make the lives of others meaningful … by doing something of lasting value. Which is why I’m going into politics.’

I heard a rattling sound as the penny dropped. He was just going to sashay into that charmed political space warmed up by his dear departed dad. ‘You? In politics? You’re a banker. Your morals are harder to find than a small-business loan.’

‘Not any more. I fell out with my American business partners. Did my mother ever tell you that I eventually set up my own hedge fund company in LA? But the blatant greed of my partners, the tax dodging, the Ponzi schemes … it turned my stomach. It made me want to dedicate myself to public service. I’m on the party’s shortlist. They vote next week. The chief whip’s called a by-election. I want to give back to society.’

‘Oh really?’ I said stonily. ‘I know the way your family gives back.’ I jack-knifed to my feet. ‘You’ll initiate a slight tax increase which will cost normal people like me £200 a year and then a substantial tax cut which will save us twenty pence.’

‘I’m standing for the Liberal Democrats,’ Jeremy said, with sombre sincerity.

I reeled around to look at him. ‘Really?’ Now I heard a groaning sound as Jeremy’s Tory father turned over in his grave. ‘And what? You think your change of political heart will soften my view of you? I do have a soft spot for you, actually … face down in a bowl of custard.’

My ex-husband’s face sank in with sadness. ‘Oh my God, Lucy. Look how cynical you’ve become. You used to be so optimistic and positive. That’s why I fell in love with you. Did I do this to you? If so, I can never forgive myself …’

‘Did you do this to me?’ I guffawed. But my laughter turned very abruptly into hot angry tears as the pain of the past hit me square in the chest. ‘How could you have just abandoned us?’ I yelled at him, and then saw fists flying through the air and realized as they pummelled Jeremy’s chest that they were attached to my own arms.

Jeremy took each blow until I’d run out of steam. ‘I deserve it. I hate myself for what I’ve done.’ His voice cracked. ‘And I want to make it up to you, Lucy.’

‘Why should I believe you?’ To my own ears I sounded vulnerable, in spite of my Muhammad Ali impersonation.

‘If
you
can change so much, Luce, then so can
I
. Won’t you let me see my son?’

‘Oh,
now
you want to see him? But what about all the times
he
needed to see
you
? Where were you during your son’s banging-his-head-on-the-ground stage? And where were you when he tried to jump off the window ledge? And where were you when he used to punch himself in the testicles with self-loathing frustration? Where were you when he was getting his head flushed down the school toilets?’ I stomped on the bouquet by my feet. ‘Where were you then, you bastard?’

Jeremy had the look of a man who has just accidentally run over the Easter bunny and has come to break the news to the kids. ‘Oh Lucy. I’m so ashamed. I don’t know how you’ve coped.’

‘Oh well,’ I said, my voice dripping in sarcasm. ‘Any slight frustration I might occasionally have felt was simply alleviated by locking the door and screaming into my pillow for hours and hours and hours … If it weren’t for my family, I’d be in an institution by now, braiding my hair.’

Jeremy faced me, open-armed. ‘Let me make it up to you. I want to take care of you and my son.’

‘Oh, the way you took care of us in the divorce? You told me we would split everything down the middle. Except that there was nothing left to split. You hired a crack legal team who managed to hide all our assets and write off most of your income. I didn’t stand a chance.’

‘Divorce is the equivalent of asbestos removal – delicate, fraught and highly toxic. My father handled it all through his lawyer. I can see now how bad his advice was. How cruel
they
were. But, Lucy, we were so in love once, don’t you remember?’

‘Yes, we had so much in common …
You
.’

‘Do you remember our beautiful wedding?’ he coaxed.

‘Yeah, it was a fairy-tale marriage … rewritten by Quentin Tarantino.’

‘There are five golden rules to a happy marriage.’ Jeremy attempted a wry smile. ‘Unfortunately, nobody knows what the hell they are.’

‘Oh, I do. Gin, tranquillizers, vodka, Xanex and sleeping pills. The reason we broke up is that you did not regard matrimony as an exclusive carnal arrangement.’

‘Men are weak. Inferior. Not worthy. Your own father turned out to be a priapic fancier of underage masseuses and lap-dancers, but you forgave him. If you forgave your father, can’t you forgive me?’

I looked at my ex-husband with forensic attention to detail. It was the same Jeremy, but he wore an unfamiliar expression – remorse. It may have moved a less battered woman. But the only thing I didn’t doubt was my doubt. ‘No.’

‘I was wrong ever to leave you,’ he said in a thick voice. ‘I’ve never loved any other woman but you.’ In the shade of the building, his eyes no longer seemed blue but dark and soft, like liquid chocolate. ‘You cut your hair? It suits you.’

‘You are dead to me, Jeremy.’

His eyes were now full of a sensitive schoolboy’s baffled hurt. ‘As is my dear father, with so much left unsaid. But I still have time to make it up to
my
son … Do you think Merlin has any feelings for me?’ he asked tentatively, as biddable as a baby.

‘Like me, I’m sure he worships the ground you’re buried in.’

‘Oh, Luce, how can I prove myself to you?’ He glanced up at my paint-peeled, crumbling brick terrace, choked by ivy. ‘Let me buy you a new house. Would you like me to do that? What would you like me to do?’

Locking him into a sewage canal with a cadre of syphilitic sex criminals seemed a reasonable choice under the surreal circumstances. ‘Just stay away from us,’ I said angrily.

‘So I suppose there’s no point in asking you to marry me again then?’ He flashed me his most seductive half-smile.

‘Marriage to you was like having an autopsy performed whilst still alive.’ I moved back inside the doorway of my house.

He hung his head. ‘I’m so sorry, Lucy.’

I savoured the full depths of his shame. ‘I think it’s time for you to return to the sulphur-scented depths which spawned you.’