The Man Who Forgot His Wife (10 page)

The next section was manageable if a little uncomfortable. Before I swore an oath I was asked my religion. I took a calculated guess that I was probably not a Hindu or a Zoroastrian and so swore an oath on the Holy Bible that everything I would say would be the truth. I learned that I was the petitioner (amazingly to my mind,
I
was the one who had initiated divorce proceedings) and I confirmed my date of birth as the one I had seen printed on the forms. ‘So what does that make me?’ I thought as I considered this seemingly randomly allocated birthdate. ‘What star sign is May – that’s Taurus, isn’t it? Mind you, it’s a load of rubbish anyway …’

‘And your occupation?’

‘Teacher!’ I snapped back, like a smug contestant in a TV quiz show. At last – I had got a couple of questions right. That must have stood me in good stead, I thought.

Above us a large, angry fly was trapped inside the light casing. To my heightened senses, its manic buzzing and spinning was as loud as the monotone voices of the two lawyers talking a language I barely understood. Maddy poured herself some water and then
I
did likewise. My lawyer nodded to me as if to suggest that something had just gone according to plan, though I had no idea what that might possibly be. Eventually the judge instructed the counsel for the respondent to begin their case, and after his opening statement we came to the moment I had hoped would never happen: the part of the proceedings when I was to be cross-examined by my wife’s lawyer.

‘Mr Vaughan, I want you to cast your mind back to 1998.’

‘Erm, okay … I’ll do my best …’

‘You and your wife first employed the service of a financial adviser in that year, did you not?’

The lawyer looked at me, almost miming my expected agreement.

‘Quite possibly.’

‘I’m afraid we need to be clearer than that, Mr Vaughan. Did you and your wife employ the services of a financial adviser in February 1998?’

I looked across at my estranged wife, who was staring directly ahead.

‘I have no reason to disbelieve Madeleine if she says that we did.’

‘And did you not make a decision at that meeting on the seventeenth of February 1998 that, in addition to your teacher’s pension, to which we will come later, you would also make freestanding additional voluntary contributions in your name only, because you, Mr Vaughan, as the only taxpayer at that point, could then benefit from more tax relief than if they had been in Madeleine’s name?’

I would have struggled to follow these financial details even with my brain in normal working order.

‘Erm, I don’t know.’

The judge leaned forward. ‘Think hard, Mr Vaughan. It’s important that you try to recall the key points.’

‘Er, well, it sounds quite possible. If there is a record of the payments being made after that date, then obviously I did take out an additional pension in my name.’

‘The existence of this pension plan is not the issue, Mr Vaughan. The point is that you verbally assured your wife that this personal pension was intended for your joint benefit, but that it was only taken out in your name to save tax. Is this not the case? Is this not what you told your wife in 1998?’

I was perspiring in places that I hadn’t known had sweat glands. I thought of lying and just obligingly going along with the plausible picture being presented to me, but I felt a higher duty to be as honest as it was possible to be in this uncomfortably dishonest situation.

‘I have to say, in all truth, that I really can’t remember,’ I declared with a sigh. Maddy’s lawyer looked completely stumped. As if I had craftily outmanoeuvred him.

‘Brilliant!’ whispered my own counsel.

‘You can’t remember?’ scorned the opposing barrister. ‘How convenient for you …’

‘No, I really can’t. I mean, I might have said that to her. But I might not have. It was a long time ago, and I just can’t recall.’

The judge intervened: ‘Would it not have been possible to get a statement from this, er, “financial adviser”, if he was present at this meeting?’

‘We did attempt to, your honour. But he left the country after he was declared bankrupt.’

‘Oh, this is getting us nowhere … Can we move on?’

‘You don’t remember any subsequent assurances to your wife, do you, Mr Vaughan?’ improvised her lawyer, now sounding a little desperate.

‘Er, no. No, I don’t.’

Maddy shook her head in contempt and disappointment. ‘It’s not enough that you have all the money,’ she spat. ‘You have to come and take the hedge trimmer away as well! You don’t even have a garden any more!’

‘Quiet, please,’ said the judge.

‘I don’t want the hedge trimmer. You can have it back …’

‘Quiet, PLEASE!’ insisted the judge, and as her lawyer moved on to the next matter, I tried to catch Maddy’s eye, to mouth to her that the trimmer was hers – I’d buy her a new one if she wanted. She couldn’t even bear to look at me.

The memory test now moved on to the next stage: the years of our marriage and how they reflected the respective investment made by both parties.

‘Mr Vaughan, while you were at work, would you attempt to claim you were also doing fifty per cent of the childcare?’

‘Er, I doubt it. It sounds like I was always still at work when they came home from school for a start.’

‘Quite,’ he commented meaningfully. ‘Would you even attempt to put a figure on the proportion of the childcare you did?’ He theatrically pretended to imagine the sort of tasks this might involve. ‘Picking them up from school? Helping with homework? Cooking their tea? Running them to clubs and swimming lessons? Did you do forty per cent of this, thirty per cent, or indeed virtually none of this type of work?’

‘Well, it’s very hard to say
exactly
,’ I said truthfully. ‘Much less than Madeleine, I’m sure.’ I glanced nervously to my lawyer, whose indignant frown suggested that he’d personally witnessed his client doing years of baths and bedtime stories.

‘Would it be fair to say that if Madeleine had not done so much of the domestic work involved in raising a family, then you would not have been able to work the very long hours that both parties accept you put into your career?’

‘I guess you’re right …’

I noticed Maddy look up.

‘So would you not agree that seventy:thirty represents an unfair reflection of the paid
and unpaid
work done by the two of you during this period?’

‘Yes, it is unfair. I think a fifty:fifty split would be fairer.’ And I stared directly at my wife. She looked completely astonished.

There was a moment of slightly confused silence, punctuated only by the mad spinning of the fly trapped in the light. I was rather disappointed this was not some huge courtroom with press and witnesses and a packed public gallery; for it was at this point that it would have burst into an excited hubbub, forcing the judge to bang his gavel and shout, ‘Silence in court!’ Instead, Maddy’s lawyer seemed utterly bewildered. It was as if he was only programmed to disagree and contradict; he tried to reach for words but none would come. Now my own representative felt compelled to respond to what had just happened. He stood up.

‘Your honour, the respondent’s counsel is putting words into my client’s mouth. Surely it is for the court to make a ruling after we have put our own case for a seventy:thirty split.’ And he urgently gestured for me to shut up.

‘It appears, Mr Cottington, that you and your client have come to court without agreeing in advance on the apportionment you are seeking.’

‘Mr
Cottington
,’ I thought. ‘So that’s my lawyer’s name.’

I had feared that the judge might be irritated, but in fact he seemed to be suppressing a certain degree of excitement that something slightly out of the ordinary had finally happened. He made a self-consciously formal pronouncement reminding both counsel of the importance of preparation, and resolved to put this issue to one side for the moment as there were a number of other matters to be settled. He entered into a whispered exchange with the alarmingly overweight clerk while I was left standing there. Although I felt certain I had done the right thing, I could feel my legs shaking underneath me.

Then, in the middle of the most stressful situation I could recall, I suddenly got my first negative memory. Maddy was angrily berating me and I was shouting back. I even felt a twinge of resentment rise up in me as I recalled how over the top she had been about a little thing like a battery in a smoke alarm. This memory was hazier, but the argument had arisen because I had
apparently
‘endangered the family’ by taking the battery out of the smoke alarm to put in my bike light.

‘Why the hell didn’t you replace the battery?’ she is shouting
.

‘I forgot, okay? Don’t you ever forget things?’

‘Not where the safety of our children is concerned.’

‘Well, this was for the safety of your husband – so that he was visible on the dark, busy roads! Isn’t that important too?’

‘No, actually – it’s not as important. Though you could have bought a replacement battery anyway – you just forgot all about it. You just forgot about us but remembered you.’

Looking at Madeleine standing there in the court, I couldn’t believe that there was such an irrational and aggressive side to her; that she was capable of so much anger about something as trivial as one AA battery.

The court had come to consider the key point in the settlement, the decision on the Property Adjustment Order. With no agreement on the house, it would have to be sold, but negotiations had completely broken down over a fair split of the money, the furnishings and who was going to have to talk to the estate agent. I had been allowed to stand down, but the more I listened to the arguments from both sides, the clearer it became that neither Maddy nor I would be able to afford a house in the same area that would accommodate two children and an excitable golden retriever. It would mean moving the kids far away from their school, maybe either parent having to sleep on a sofa bed in the living room when the kids were with them; it would mean no garden and the children having tiny bedrooms and no space for friends to come and stay. Maybe they should keep the house, I thought, and we could take turns to borrow that collapsing tent we’d had in Ireland.

One blindingly obvious solution to all this was not being suggested by anyone in the courtroom and I felt a duty to point it out.

‘Excuse me, your honour – is it possible to … change my mind?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Can I change my mind? Or is too late?’

‘You want to go for a different arrangement regarding the property assets as well?’

‘No, no – about the whole divorce thing,’ I heard myself say. ‘I mean, looking at it afresh, as it were, I wonder if we really ought to try and give the marriage another go?’

‘Vaughan, stop it!’ said Maddy. ‘This is not a game.’

‘Vaughan, what are you doing?’ pleaded my lawyer.

‘If I’m the petitioner – can’t I, like, withdraw the petition?’

It seemed like a reasonable question. I hadn’t actually seen any petition, let alone asked any members of the public to sign it. But the judge’s patience had now been exhausted and he seemed at a complete loss over what to say. Even the fly in the light fitting went silent. Deep down I had been hoping for the judge to declare ‘This is most irregular, but, given the circumstances, this court instructs Vaughan and Madeleine to jet off to the Caribbean for a second honeymoon, to share a beach hammock in the moonlight and for Mrs Vaughan to fall in love with her husband all over again.’

Instead, he reprimanded my lawyer for not having checked whether his client actually wanted a divorce and declared that this case was ‘a disaster’. Looking at the time, he said he was faced with no alternative but an adjournment. We would return at a later date when, he said pointedly, he hoped we would be a little clearer on what it was we actually wanted the court to decide. Inside I felt a rush of elation, which lasted for just a split second as I watched Maddy burst into tears and then dash outside. She didn’t even look at me, but was followed by her lawyer who was trying to tell her how well it had actually gone.

Mr Cottington, on the other hand, looked utterly shell-shocked. He chose to say nothing at all to me; instead he gathered up his
papers
into his briefcase and just left, followed by his trainees and accomplices. The judge had already departed so I sat there in silence for a moment, trying to take in what it was I’d just done.

‘Well, I’ve been in this job over twenty years and I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ said the clerk.

I attempted a brave smile. ‘I just think we should be really sure,’ I ventured. ‘You know, before we finally cut the knot.’

‘Right.’ The clerk was straightening the chairs. ‘As I say, people are usually pretty sure by the time they get here.’

I felt embarrassed and a little bit foolish. Part of me had wanted to rush after Maddy, but I didn’t want to experience the angry side of her that I had just remembered. I sat staring straight ahead, wondering where I could possibly go from here.

The clerk had finished gathering her things. ‘That was the last case before lunch, but I’m afraid I can’t leave you in here on your own.’

‘No, of course,’ I said. ‘Only – would you mind if I unclipped this light fitting? There’s a big fly trapped inside, and he’s been going mad.’

‘Oh. Well, there is a maintenance officer … but, yes, all right. I think it just unclips on the side there.’

‘Yes, I can see it.’

And so I climbed up on a chair and released the light cover, and stood back to watch the grateful insect fly free. Instead it fell straight to the floor and spun around buzzing on its back.

‘Urgh, he’s enormous, isn’t he?’ said the clerk. And she stepped over towards where it was struggling, and the spinning and buzzing gave way to a final crunch as her big fat foot came squelching down on it.

‘There!’ she said, with a smile. ‘Good luck sorting out your marriage – or we’ll see you back here in a couple of months …’

Chapter 8

MADDY AND I
are on a train. It is before people have mobile phones, because no one is shouting, ‘I’m on a train!’ We have not been out of university that long and approach the prospect of a long rail journey with a different mindset from the sensible reading opportunity that we’d settle for later. Basically, we don’t view this space as a train so much as a moving pub. I find the perfect double seat facing one another in the smoking compartment, which only adds to the bar-room atmosphere
.