The Editor's Wife (21 page)

‘I know she'll love it. And it's always best to present a united front to Herman. Not that I'm expecting any resistance. It's absolutely his sort of thing.'

‘Thank you for reading it so quickly. I wasn't expecting to hear from you so soon.'

‘It was a pleasure to read. I'm really excited about it.' His relentless goodness was unendurable. I had to get off the phone.

‘Look, Owen,' I burbled. ‘I've got to go. There's someone waiting to make a call.'

‘Of course. Sorry. I'll get back to you as soon as there's any news.'

‘Thanks, Owen. Don't go to any trouble,' I finished feebly.

‘It's no trouble,' he said cheerfully. ‘We'll talk again soon.'

At the click of disconnection I sank down onto the stairs and clutched my sweaty head in my arms. What should have been a moment of triumph had turned to ashes. My conscience had woken from its slumbers too late: everything was in ruins. I had betrayed Owen in the worst way possible, and in his innocence he continued to heap me with praise and favours. For a moment I contemplated my own vileness with a detachment that was almost serene, and then my heart gave a great kick of panic. Perhaps even now she was confessing.
Owen, I did a silly thing, today. Please don't be cross with me.
Or maybe she was in the kitchen in her frilly apron, cooking his favourite supper as if nothing had happened, a bottle of wine breathing easily on the side, the twins sleeping peacefully upstairs, just like any other evening. This seemed equally impossible.

Not wanting to spoil our moment of discovery with sordid conspiracies of concealment, we had arranged nothing, agreed nothing.

I spent a wretched evening, anxious, tense, waiting for the axe to fall. I contemplated biking over to Aysgarth Terrace and spying on the house to reassure myself that there were no signs of domestic unrest, but I was too much of a coward. In any case, in my present mood it was hard to imagine any scene that would have sent me away comforted.

At one point, quite late, the phone rang and I felt the by now familiar adrenalin rush. I stood by the door, holding my breath, in anticipation of the footsteps on the stairs, the summoning knock, but none came. I felt hunted, even in my own room. I snatched up my keys and coat and headed out into the safety and anonymity of the dark street. I walked without any sense of direction, but briskly and purposefully to deter muggers. The comforting familiarity of my neighbourhood, which even at this hour was still busy and sleepless, prompted a wave of nostalgia, bordering on grief, for yesterday when my life was simple.

I had discovered too late a great truth: that to be happy it requires nothing more than a clear conscience, and that there can be no happiness without one. I didn't know it then, but in the matter of guilt I was a mere amateur. I had only scaled the foothills, while the vast ranges were all still ahead of me.

As I strode onwards towards the city, chin down, collar
up, what I would have to do became clear. The only conceivable thing was to tell Diana, who was herself probably experiencing similar regrets, and had after all far more to lose, that there could be no repetition. We must never meet, except in Owen's company, and never mention or acknowledge the incident again. Owen must never find out. This was the best that could be salvaged from our reckless behaviour. There was no alternative. I was absolutely determined.

‘
KEEP STILL OR
I'll stab you.'

‘Ow. Why don't I just take it off?'

‘It would be OK if you stopped fidgeting.'

I was lying on my bed while Diana, kneeling on the floor, tried to sew a button back onto the shirt that I was still wearing. She had noticed it hanging by a strand when I was getting dressed, and produced from her handbag a tiny repair kit containing needles, pins, folding scissors, and four coloured threads wound around a strip of card. Her bag was full of precautionary supplies – tissues, plasters, paracetamol, nail file, change for parking, pen, mirror, comb, lipstick, torch – the paraphernalia of someone thorough, sensible, and a shade pessimistic.

It was a week later, and I had seen her every day apart from Saturday and Sunday, when she was unavailable. To
fill in the yawning weekend hours I had gone up to the West End and bought her some presents: an ankle bracelet (which she thought was hilariously tarty); a black basque (likewise); a pair of turquoise leather gloves (jackpot!) and half a dozen CDs by my favourite bands.

On Sunday I took my sheets to the launderette and read all the tabloids that had been left behind, while I was waiting for a free dryer, then I remade the bed ready for Monday when I would see her again. She always came to my place for the sake of discretion. All the time my visits to Aysgarth Terrace had been innocent, it had amused her no end to think of the neighbours jumping to salacious conclusions. Now that there were real grounds for gossip, of course, it was no longer funny.

The great edifice of good intentions I'd built during that long night trudging the streets of South London had collapsed like a house of cards when confronted by the reality of Diana herself. Something I had failed to take account of, during all my rehearsals, is that love, in its early stages, is an imperative that sweeps all other loyalties aside.

My resolve was already weakening as I walked down the path to the house and rang the bell. I might have rallied if I'd met anything like equal determination, but the door opened, Diana's smile lit up the street and any hope was lost.

‘I had to see you,' I blurted out – the very opposite of what I had planned and intended to say, which was, ‘I can't see you again.'

‘Thank God you came,' she said, pulling me into the house. We were kissing before we'd even got the door shut. Her urgent, scrabbling fingers were tugging at my belt, and she went down on me right there in the hallway, my back up against the rocking horse, one of its stirrups digging into my spine. The moment for moral fortitude was well and truly past.

Later, I tried to reassure myself with the thought that if Diana was prepared to betray her husband, the father of her children, then it was not up to me to recoil from the lesser offence of betraying a friend. This is the twisted reasoning that passes for logic in a mind curdled by desire.

Our one conversation about our ‘predicament' left us both so miserable, and caused Diana such anguish, while resolving nothing, that I never dared to raise the subject again.

‘Diana, what are we going to do?' I said, that same morning, as we were lying together on the spare bed, in a warm, post-sex torpor. ‘I mean, what are we actually going to do?'

The skin of her arms rose into gooseflesh as though my words had let in an icy draught, and she looked at me with something like panic. ‘I don't know. I don't know. I didn't plan this.'

‘Neither did I. I just wondered what you think is going to happen. In the future.'

‘I don't think. I'm trying not to think. Thinking any further ahead than tomorrow makes me feel ill.' She covered her face with crossed arms.

‘But supposing Owen finds out, or suspects? What are you going to do? Admit it? Deny it?'

She sat bolt upright. ‘He mustn't find out. He'd never, ever forgive me.'

‘You mean he'd throw you out?'

‘No. He'd never leave me; but he wouldn't forgive me either. You're not married, you don't understand. I would have to spend the rest of my life atoning, and it still wouldn't be enough.' The colour drained from her cheeks as a thought occurred to her, and she looked like a ghost of herself. ‘You haven't told anyone, have you?'

‘No, of course I haven't. Who am I going to tell? I'm not exactly feeling great about it myself.'

‘You don't have as much to lose as me.' To my dismay she started to blink very fast. Tears would surely follow. This melancholy truth struck me: I had it in my power to make the woman I loved miserable, nothing more.

‘Sorry,' I quailed, clutching her against me. ‘I didn't mean to upset you. I'd do anything for you. Anything.'

‘Then don't make me face things that I can't face. Don't make me choose. If you make me, I'll have to choose Owen.'

‘You don't have to. I'm yours whatever.'

She kissed me with relief, dry-eyed now. ‘I can't bear the thought of doing without you. That's all.'

‘That's fine by me.'

So we made our pact-without-words to collude in whatever moral blindness was required to sustain us. We wouldn't plot or scheme or even think.

‘Who knows what might happen in the future?
Anything might happen. I might be run over by a bus tomorrow.' She said this almost wistfully, as though this solution had some virtues.

‘I said I could be happy in this room when I first saw it. And I was right.' Diana had finished sewing on the button and was sitting on my window ledge eating pistachio nuts from a tin while I tried to coax a signal from my elderly radio.

Owen's sister, an occasional actress, had a part in the afternoon play – an adaptation of
Ethan Frome
– and Diana had promised to listen and offer feedback. It was safe to mention Owen in this sort of neutral context: only in relation to our ‘predicament' was he off limits.

At last I managed to locate some dialogue amongst the storm of buzzing and whistling.

‘Aha, that's Bronnie,' said Diana. ‘Not a bad American accent. Considering she's from Neath.'

‘Bronnie? What sort of name's that?' I retorted, then shut up smartly, remembering that her own children had been saddled with equally daft names.

I left her listening happily, snapping pistachios, while I went out onto the landing for a cigarette: I never smoked in her presence as she didn't want to go home with the smell in her hair. I'd offered to give up altogether, but she said, no, don't go making changes for my sake.

I came back into the room five minutes later, just in time to see Diana spring away from the window, sending a lapful of nutshells skimming across the floor.

‘It's Leila,' she said.

We gaped at each other. ‘What?'

‘Out there. Walking down the street.'

Instinctively I took a step forward, but Diana put her arm out to stop me. ‘Don't let her see you. Just pretend you're out.'

‘Are you sure it was her?'

‘Of course I'm sure. There's no one else who looks like that!'

‘Did she see you?'

‘I don't know. I don't think so.' For some reason we were whispering.

‘What would Leila be doing here?'

‘That's what I was going to ask you,' said Diana, with a slight edge to her voice. ‘I thought you weren't in touch.'

‘We're not. I never even gave her my address.' I tried to think back to that lunch in St Martin's Lane. I was pretty sure I hadn't even mentioned where I lived.

We waited, tensed, for the doorbell, but it didn't come.

‘We'll just sit tight and not answer,' said Diana. ‘I assume she hasn't got a key.'

‘Don't be insane!'

‘I was joking.'

Later, lying awake, alone, I would brood on the unfairness of having to justify a non-existent relationship with an ugly lesbian, while Diana spent every night in another man's bed.

‘Look, she's clearly not coming here or she'd have rung by now,' I said, still not entirely convinced that it wasn't
a case of mistaken identity. ‘Maybe it's just a coincidence. Perhaps she's visiting someone else in this street.'

Diana looked sceptical.

‘Her drug-dealer for instance,' I suggested.

‘I can't very well ask her what she was doing here,' Diana pointed out.

‘Anyway, would it be such a disaster if she found you here? She knows I often call on you.'

‘But me coming here is a very different thing.'

We had both advanced towards the window now, drawn by an irresistible urge to know the worst. I tweaked the edge of the curtain and peered down through the chink onto an empty street.

‘Oh shit. My car,' Diana said, joining me.

‘What about it?'

‘Even if she didn't see me, she'll have seen the car.'

‘Women don't notice things like cars,' I said.

‘Of course we do. She'll have recognised the number plate.'

‘But even if she suspects something, she won't make trouble for you. She's your friend. It'll be all right.' It was nearly time for her to leave and I couldn't bear us to part on a note of crisis.

Diana nodded, biting her lip. ‘Yes. It'll be all right.'

We were used, by now, to performing great feats of self-deception, and this was our slogan.

IT'S SURPRISING HOW
quickly we can make an accommodation with guilt. After only two weeks, those initial lacerations of remorse had given way to a general deadening of conscience sufficient to permit sleep, restore appetite and steady nerve. Where my own failings were concerned, I apparently had vast reserves of forgiveness.

That necessary numbness of mind severely limited my repertoire of moods, and I existed in one of two states: euphoria when I was with Diana; inertia when I was not. The euphoria was of course slightly tainted by an underlying sorrow that soon she would inevitably have to leave. Gerald could probably have plotted my emotional state on a graph: Proximity to Diana against Contentment. A positive correlation. The happiest time was the moment just before her arrival, when I was not yet dreading her
departure. If I could have frozen time at any point I think I would have chosen that second when my straining ears picked out the sound of her heels on the stairs.

And then Owen called.

‘Christopher.' His voice was funereal. ‘I don't know how to say this.'

‘Then say it quickly.'

‘Herman's turned it down.'

‘What? Oh, the book.' It took me a second to remember the title. I wanted to laugh with relief.