The Man Who Forgot His Wife (35 page)

‘But later is too late. I have to kill the lie now. She said she’d forgive me if I told her
immediately
.’

‘At least sleep on it; think it over. Don’t ruin her big day. ’Cos this whole thing today, you know, it’s actually a bit like a wedding,’ observed Gary, as if this was a rather perceptive insight.

The applause for Maddy cut the furtive exchange short and now the moment had come for the spoof ceremony and the symbolic (and unironic) exchange of rings. I stepped back outside with Gary, who seemed slightly less assured than he had before, less relaxed in front of all these people, and he stammered and mumbled his explanation of the next section of the proceedings.

I caught Maddy’s eye and she raised her eyebrows at me with a slightly coy grin. This might possibly be the last smile I ever got from her, I thought. Which was better: a happy marriage based on a lie, or the risk of no marriage because I’d told the truth? Or was that first choice really available to me? Wouldn’t it only
appear
to be a good marriage but not really be happy at all, though she would never quite put her finger on what was missing? And why
did
they stop giving out free wine glasses with petrol? Was it sending the wrong message to drink-drivers?

‘Maddy!’ I whispered behind Gary’s back.

‘Ready?’ she said back, unsurreptitiously.

‘Maddy – there’s something I have to tell you before we do this. Come into the kitchen.’

I sounded so deadly serious, it must have seemed ridiculous.

‘Stop pissing about – you’ll give me the giggles.’

‘I’m serious. It’s about before we split up. I’ve only just remembered it, but you have to know now.’

‘Vaughan, you’re freaking me out. Shut up!’

With just a gesture of my head, I indicated that we move back from the exposed stage and, looking perplexed, Maddy stepped inside.

‘So what’s the big deal?’ she whispered.

‘You know when we were barely talking and I went to Paris with the school? It wasn’t just with the school. I went because there was another woman.’

Now Maddy could see that I wasn’t joking, and no amount of blusher or lipstick could hide the colour draining from her face. She struggled for words for a moment, but finally half whispered, half choked a question.

‘What do you mean? How … who is she?’

‘She was a French language assistant at school. It was over in a month, and I’m not in contact. It was just a thing, when everything was going wrong, and I’m really, really sorry, but I had to be honest with you.’

‘Jesus himself attended a wedding in Galilee,’ read Gary from his cue cards. ‘He gave the happy couple his father’s blessing and some IKEA gift vouchers …’

‘Maddy, say something. It’ll never happen again, I promise. We were both so unhappy then, I think I was, like, pressing a self-destruct button.’

But Maddy had nothing to say, though her mascara was being diluted and a dark line ran down her cheek.

‘So, Vaughan and Madeleine, step forward please!’ demanded the unconvincing clergyman. We hovered on the other side of the open doors for a second. ‘Come on, come on, don’t be shy!’ said Gary, ushering us back out into the open air. ‘So if any person or golden retriever knows of any just impediment why this man and woman should not be disunited in unholy divorce, let them speak now or for ever hold their peace.’

I glanced at Maddy, who seemed too stunned to quite understand what she was doing there.

‘Jack Joseph Neil Vaughan, do you take Madeleine Rose Vaughan of this parish to be your legally separated ex-wife, to live with in sin from this day forth? Will you notice when she’s been to the hairdresser’s and accept her choice of driving routes as a reasonable alternative?’

‘I, um … I will.’ I glanced at her; at least the crying seemed to be at a minimum. But Dillie had seen that her mother had shed tears, and though many present presumed she was moved by the emotion of the occasion, her daughter could sense that it was something else.

‘And, Madeleine Rose Vaughan, do you take Jack Joseph Neil Vaughan to be your legally separated ex-husband, to live with in sin from this day forth. Will you tolerate him and humour him? Will you not use his razor for your armpits? Will you laugh at jokes you’ve heard a hundred times before? Will you pretend to be interested in his theories about what might have happened if Hitler had invaded Afghanistan?’

A silence followed. Jean’s mother at the back saying, ‘I will,’ didn’t count.

‘She’s forgotten her lines, ladies and gentlemen – it’s a very big day …’ Gary had been aware of us whispering inside and feared the worst. ‘Just say, “I will”,’ he murmured to her. She looked down and saw her friends staring expectantly at her – almost mouthing the two words on her behalf. Gary smiled at the crowd, as if to suggest that this sort of pause was perfectly commonplace and normal service would be resumed any moment.

‘She’s changed her mind!’ shouted a drunken heckler, whose wife then slapped him on the arm because she realized that maybe Maddy had.

‘Take your time, Maddy – it’s a big decision …’ The humour had gone from Gary’s voice, as if he was speaking to her sincerely now.

Finally Maddy seemed ready to speak and a wave of relief came over the crowd.

‘You … you …’ She was staring directly at me. ‘You BASTARD!’

A couple of people attempted to laugh, as if this was all part of the day’s ironic script, but their hearts weren’t really in it. ‘You complete and utter bastard!’ And now she really did burst into tears as she threw her bouquet at my face. ‘I never want to see you again for as long as I live.’ And then she barged past Gary as she ran off the stage into the house, until the stunned crowd heard the front door slamming behind her.

Dillie’s friend was supposed to cue the music the moment the ceremony was over, so at this point she nervously pressed ‘Play’ and the opening chorus of ‘She Loves You’ by the Beatles suddenly started up. I didn’t know quite where to look, but ended up attempting a brave smile at my son, who was staring back at me with the fury of a child betrayed by his own father.

‘Oh, fuck!’ said Gary finally. ‘Not again.’

Chapter 24

APPARENTLY THE PARTY
went downhill a bit after Madeleine left. The whole ‘
Isn’t it funny that they’re getting back together just as they get divorced?
’ motif lost its ironic edge after the bride had thrown her bouquet in the groom’s face, shouted that she had never wanted to see him ever again and stormed out in tears. Gary still tried to do one or two of his prepared jokes, but even he soon realized that perhaps the moment had gone. I eventually ran out after Maddy, but she’d grabbed the car keys and sped off as aggressively as is possible in a Honda Jazz automatic.

Her instinct had been to go and seek comfort with a friend, but after she had been driving for a minute or two she realized that all her friends were in her back garden with her adulterous partner, so she ended up in Sainsbury’s car park and when the £5-car-wash man said her car was very dirty, she burst into tears again.

The party guests drifted off, mumbling embarrassed ‘thank-yous’ to me, and saying that most of the party had been very enjoyable. One of them took their wedding gift back home with them. Later that evening Jean came round to collect a few things of Maddy’s, explaining to the children that their mummy was
going
to stay with her mummy for a night or two and that she would ring them later.

‘If I could just talk to her for a moment,’ I pleaded. ‘Could you tell her that I need to talk to her?’

‘She just needs a bit of
headspace
at the moment, Vaughan. Every relationship goes through this …’

I thought about this after she had gone and was pretty sure that every relationship did not go through this. Husband and wife split up, he has a mental breakdown resulting in total amnesia, spends an anonymous week in hospital, eventually sees his estranged wife as if for the first time, falls in love with her, bluffs his way through a court hearing, changes his mind about getting a divorce, eventually wins his wife back, then at the party to celebrate their new beginning remembers that he was unfaithful, tells her and she breaks up with him all over again. If every relationship did go through this, I would certainly like to read the self-help book or see the staged photos in the tabloid problem page featuring perplexed-looking models in their underwear.

In fact, Maddy stayed away for more than a couple of nights, and now I was the stressed single parent, getting the kids off to school, dashing on to work, then rushing back and cooking their tea and failing to be of any assistance with their maths homework. After that we’d all sit down to watch ‘an hour’s television’ and a few hours later the kids would wake me up on the sofa and tell me they were going to bed now.

Jamie and Dillie spoke to their mum on the phone, but didn’t ask any questions about what was going to happen in the long term. But passive acceptance is not the same thing as inner contentment.

‘Do you want tuna pasta or sausage and mash?’ I asked Jamie on the second night.

‘Either,’ shrugged my son.

‘Well, say one. Tuna pasta?’

‘Okay.’

‘Or sausage and mash?’

‘Okay.’

‘Which one?’

‘Either.’

I let out a significant sigh. ‘Dillie, do you have a preference?’

Poor Dillie just wanted whatever would lighten the atmosphere and so endeavoured to be as accommodating as possible.

‘I don’t mind,’ she said nervously.

Maddy rang Jamie’s mobile every night and he grunted his few words before passing the handset to Dillie, who used up the talk-plan minutes within the first couple of days. I had texted and emailed Maddy but she couldn’t bring herself to speak to me just yet.

I offered to move out if Maddy wanted to be back at the house with Dillie and Jamie, but in her anger she interpreted this as me not wanting to be responsible for the children so that I would be free to chase other young female members of staff.

Gary and Linda had me round for supper and I learned that they had tried to talk to Maddy about me, pointing out, in my defence, that I had at least told her the truth.

‘Okay, it was wrong, he admits that,’ Linda had said. ‘But not every bloke would have owned up—’

‘I wouldn’t have,’ Gary had chipped in brightly. But now Gary had reasons of his own to be depressed. He reported to me that he had finally decided to close down YouNews.

‘Oh no – I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘I thought that was the big one, man. I thought we were going to blow Murdoch out of the water.’

‘Yeah, well, he is quite powerful. You know, in global media terms …’

‘User-generated news doesn’t work. People were just making stuff up.’

‘What – unlike tabloid journalists?’

‘I liked it,’ said Linda, supportively. ‘There was this really funny clip of a chimpanzee with a power hose—’

‘Linda! That’s not what it was for.’

‘So are you no longer online?’

‘Well, I posted a message saying it was closing down. But then some joker posted another message saying my message was a spoof and that YouNews had bought CNN and now everyone in the chatroom is really excited.’

‘That’s the trouble with the wisdom of crowds. Sometimes the crowd turns out to be really stupid.’

It felt like everything went wrong in the end. In your twenties you’re full of optimism about all the things you’re going to achieve; you pile up ambition and plans to be accomplished at some point in the future. In your thirties, you’re so shell-shocked by babies and toddlers and moving house and working extra hard to pay for it all that you don’t get a moment to glance up to see where you’re going. It’s only in your forties that you finally get time to catch your breath, take stock and reflect on where you are and what you’ve achieved. And that’s when you suddenly realize that it’s nowhere near what you’d hoped and lazily expected would just come to pass of its own accord. Your forties are the Decade of Disappointment.

I had a final appointment with Dr Lewington, who said she had been meaning to call me back in to monitor the progress on my amnesia. ‘But here’s the funny thing – I forgot!’ She chuckled. ‘What an intriguing organ the human brain is!’ We chatted for a while, but when she asked me if I had regained any more significant memories I hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘Er, no. None at all.’ The curious thing that I should have shared with her was that this was the first memory I had regained and then subsequently lost again. I clearly recalled the moment it had all come back to me, but the details of Yolande and Paris
were
now a vague blur. It was as if my subconscious thought it was a little impolite to dwell on the whole sordid business.

I noticed the ceramic head on her desk had been broken and clumsily glued back together. Finally she announced, ‘Well, I don’t think there is anything else we can do for you. You can just walk out of here and get on with the rest of your life.’

I had decided that, since I was back in the hospital, I would try to locate Bernard. I had kept meaning to visit him before now, but life had been such a helter-skelter that I had never got round to it. I could already hear him chuckling, ‘Better late than never!’

‘Bernard?’ asked Dr Lewington, blankly, when I asked where I could find him.

‘You remember Bernard? Talkative bloke in the bed next to me. Had a brain tumour, but wasn’t going to let it get him down.’

‘Oh yes, him! No – you won’t be able to visit him, I’m afraid.’

‘Is he not here any more?’

‘No. He died.’

Then, on the fourth day of limbo, I was surprised to receive a call from Maddy’s father. Ron wanted to meet up with me and suggested the Humanities Café at the British Library at Euston. He did not say what he wanted, but I was reassured by his choice of venue. If he wanted to punch me in the face for betraying his daughter, the British Library did not seem the most obvious place to do it.

I had never been to this cultural cathedral before, and felt like a student again as I crossed the vast piazza. Gazing down upon me was a giant bronze statue. ‘Isaac Newton from a drawing by William Blake’; two extraordinary brains at the other end of the scale to my unreliable piece of junk. At the top of the escalators a central pillar cased in glass revealed some of the millions of books contained within. All human knowledge was in there – a sense of quiet reverence came over me as I absorbed the echoes and hushed tones of students and academics all around me.