The Mistress's Revenge (7 page)

Guess where I read about it? On Facebook! Isn’t that hysterical? I’m now Facebook friends with Susan so I get all the updates about what’s going on in your lives. Quite amusing really, considering how much you always loathed the whole social networking thing. Susan’s “status” (I bet you didn’t even know they were called that—those little pithy sentences we use to sell our lives to hundreds of our closest friends) read:

Susan Gooding Clive nominated for music award. About bloody time!

About bloody time. So typical of Susan not to gush, but clearly so proud too. And after it, 24 comments from some of her 456 friends (yes, I’ve scrolled through them all, pondering relationships, trying to fit together some of the pieces of the life you kept so well hidden. “My friends are all so dull,” you used to complain, and I’d think it was some kind of a compliment with its unspoken inference that I was somehow some benchmark of wit. I blush now to think what a high opinion of myself I must have had).

Lots of the comments were ringing endorsements of Susan herself.

“He couldn’t have done it without you, hon.” “Behind every successful man is an awesomely successful woman” and so on.

Have you read the comments? You really should take a look. I think you’d find it quite enlightening to see how people view you and Susan from the outside, as it were—presuming to guess at the unknowable dynamic of other people’s relationships.

I
watched the awards ceremony. Well, of course I did! Obviously I guessed that you wouldn’t feature very prominently in the television coverage. After all, you’re not exactly A list, are you? And at very nearly fifty (oh, how you’d hate me reminding you of that), the camera might not exactly love you. Plus I knew Susan would be wearing something
navy and sensible, not split to the navel and held together with safety pins, so it was a fair bet that she wouldn’t help you get a starring role on the red carpet.

But funnily enough I did spot you arriving. I know you’ll have watched the footage back already about a million times, so it won’t be news that you and Susan appeared briefly in the background while that female rapper with the black hair was being interviewed.

“There they are!” shouted my son Jamie who, at nine, still believes there’s a certain magic attached to appearing on the television, and indeed to knowing anyone who appears on the television. Remember how you always worried so much about my children—“I’d hate for them to be damaged because of me,” you’d say mournfully. Well, here they both were, sprawled out on the sofa, already texting their friends to tell them someone they know, actually really quite well and have been to their house, is on terrestrial telly right now. You made their night! I know you’ll be pleased (“I only care about the welfare of the children in all of this,” you’d say during our angst-ridden conversations about “the future”).

And there indeed you were, making your way self-consciously down the red carpet, trying to look as if you weren’t aware of the flashes and the reporters and the crowds of Japanese tourists and mothers and daughters in matching rainwear, all wondering if you were anyone important.

I must say a dinner jacket suits you very well. It lends you a natural authority that the usual jeans and T-shirts sometimes lack. And I liked the way you kept one hand firmly interlinked with Susan’s, even when you rather awkwardly waved in the direction of the film crew: reassuring and faintly proprietorial.

“Susan looks lovely, doesn’t she?” Daniel remarked, as I think he felt duty-bound to do.

Tilly sniffed, unconvinced. “Why does she always have to wear blue? It’s sooooo boring.”

But in truth Susan did look very well. I think she’d done something different with her hair. It was piled up on her head in big round curls, like a vanilla ice cream sundae, and her long midnight-blue dress was
cleverly cut to disguise her less flattering angles. It was touching to see what a big effort she’d gone to not to let you down. You must have been very proud. It reminded me of how you used to love planning my outfits for me, emailing me in the morning to ask what I was intending to wear that day, or to beg me to put on some particular item of clothing if we were due to meet up. A couple of times you even appeared to weep when I walked into the pub or restaurant or wherever we’d arranged to meet. “You just look so beautiful,” you’d explain, your eyes traveling over me, sucking me up like a hand-held vacuum cleaner. “I’m jealous of your clothes for touching your skin. I’m jealous of this,” and you’d run a finger down whatever top I was wearing. “And these,” and you’d stroke the inside leg of my jeans. “And I’m particularly jealous of these.” Your hand creeping inside the waistband to feel what knickers I had on.

When you and Susan strolled hand in hand out of the camera shot, I thought that was the last we’d see of you. Daniel, of course, remained constantly on the alert for glimpses as the ceremony got under way. “Is that them?” he’d ask whenever the television camera panned around the audience. “I thought I saw Clive up there, top right of the screen.”

But just as I’d resigned myself to the probability that you and Susan wouldn’t be making a return appearance, you were announced as a winner! What a fantastic surprise!

I hadn’t even expected them to televise the Best Producer award, to be quite honest. I mean, the glamour quota isn’t exactly through the roof in that sector, is it? I have to admit I sat up a bit in my seat then, while Daniel positively whooped and hollered. I wasn’t too impressed with their choice of presenter for that award though. I mean, if they’re going to choose someone from a reality TV talent show, they could at least have gone for one of the bigger names, but I suppose they had to take what they could get. Competition for that particular honor couldn’t have been that high I should imagine. And I guess one could say she added a telegenic touch to what might otherwise have been a bit of a drab segment, although it was a little distracting the way her breasts seemed constantly on the verge of popping out of that dress. It would all have to be done with tape, don’t you suppose? I imagined
her boobs covered with little sticky strips like a child’s gift wrapping. Well, you were the one who was closest to her. Maybe you noticed something?

When she started to read the list of nominees, slowly and carefully as if reading were a skill she’d only recently mastered, I sat up a little straighter in my chair, realizing you were about to come on-screen again. Sure enough, there you were, your head filling the television like God. Just before the camera swung round to the next on the list, it panned out a little to show Susan sitting next to you, your hands still adorably intertwined. Such a comfort it must have been during those nail-biting minutes of waiting before the result was announced, to have her sitting next to you, that reassuring squeeze of the fingers.

And then all of a sudden the envelope was being opened, and there was your name, sounding so strange on the puffy, pink-glossed lips of the talent show star. Thank goodness she didn’t throw a little extra line in as they sometimes do, “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy” or “Justice has been done.”

Daniel broke into spontaneous applause as the camera focused on your face, for a split second frozen in uncomprehending shock, then creasing into smiles as you turned to Susan and kissed her long and hard on the lips before springing to your feet and making your triumphant way down the aisle toward the stage, pausing every few rows to shake a hand or receive a congratulatory pat on the arm. Then up onto the stage, taking the steps two at a time with youthful vigor, quite as if you weren’t someone whose back was inclined to go into spasm at the slightest overexertion.

When you bent to kiss the talent show star, her prodigious breasts were momentarily pressed flat against your dinner jacket and her lip gloss left a faint pink sheen on your cheek.

Moving in front of the microphone, you did that thing one often sees award winners do, where they gaze silently at the award, as though struggling to find the words to express how they feel. Knowing you, I’m sure you had your acceptance speech written and committed to memory the very day the nominations were announced, but I have to admit you did a wonderful job of appearing modestly unprepared.

When the audience was completely quiet, you looked up again to the camera, and I wasn’t surprised to see the film of water in your eyes. You always did have that capacity to cry on command. It was one of your many enviable skills.

“Wow,” you said, and for a second I was completely nonplussed, wondering when you’d started using expressions like that. “I really can’t believe this is real. What an honor! “So much of what I’ve achieved over the years has been done on a wing and a prayer and it wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t had the luck to be surrounded by some amazing people. My team at Trip Records who have smoothed over my rough edges more times than I can count and talked me out of some of my more foolhardy ideas” (typical of you to be self-deprecating while simultaneously bigging yourself up. That word “foolhardy,” with its connotations of youthful rashness and cavalier self-disregard).

“The fantastic John Peterson, whose dedication to detail and professionalism has given the company its reputation for integrity” (how clever of you to compliment your loathed vice president in such a way as to make him sound impossibly dull and worthy in comparison to the dazzling, devil-may-care foolhardiness of you).

“My wonderful children Liam and Emily who, despite their often-professed wish to have a father who was a lawyer or a banker or something nice and safe like that, have nevertheless loved me anyway” (a great touch that, the humble gratitude of an errant father).

“And finally, my wife Susan.” Immediately the camera was close up on Susan’s face, as if it had been hovering all the while in anxious anticipation in the wings.

And guess what? Well, of course you don’t need to guess because you were there, and as I say you must have watched the footage so many times since then it’ll be imprinted into your brain. Susan was crying! Actual real tears, trickling down her cheeks, which she wiped away with an angry hand. It felt weirdly voyeuristic, seeing her like that, moist-eyed and shyly quivering.

“We’ve been married now for over a quarter of a century” (cue a spontaneous smattering of applause from the audience). “And not a
day goes past when I don’t learn something new about her, something that makes me realize afresh just how incredibly fortunate I’ve been and how little I deserve her. Everything I am, I am because of her. Everything I’ve achieved, I’ve achieved because of her. All I can say is I must have done something pretty special in a past life to have been rewarded with all this. I thank you all.”

By the end of your speech, which I must say was very well received, being neither too long nor too dry (unlike the winner who preceded you who made that classic mistake of going for a note of jaunty comedy, which always makes the audience feel short-changed, as if they’d like to snatch the award back and give it to someone who really appreciates it), the tears were sparkling in your eyes like cheap superfine sugar. Meanwhile poor Susan, to whom the camera kept cutting back and forth until I felt quite nauseous with the movement of it, had mascara snaking like spilled oil down her left cheek. You’ve got to hand it to Susan, she’s never been a terribly vain person, which, I reflected, seeing her black-streaked face magnified on our wide-screen television, was just as well.

“I really should send Clive a message of congratulation,” Daniel said absently. “I’ll definitely do it tomorrow.”

Sometimes I don’t know why Daniel even bothers saying half the things he says. Both of us know he won’t really text you a message of congratulation, even though the intention is there and he’ll probably end up convincing himself that he actually has done it, so genuinely does he mean to carry it out. Daniel has what Helen Bunion calls Delivery Issues. He can come up with no end of plans and ideas, but it’s in the enactment of them where he falls down.

“Daddy, if you won an award, would you thank me and Tilly?” Jamie asked.

I must say I had to bite back a bit of a smirk at that one. The idea of Daniel stepping up to the podium to receive some kind of recognition from his peers. What would it be, I wonder, the award for Best Sunday Cyclist? Or perhaps the Lifetime Non-Achievement award? Mean, mean, mean Sally. After all Daniel can’t really help being a “serial careerist” (I read that in a magazine the other day, about people who
change careers so often they never quite get off the first rung). I have high hopes for the teacher training he’s halfway through though—after all, it’s already lasted longer than his last career (if you can call selling “stuff” on eBay a career)—although he hasn’t even properly got into a classroom yet! Some of the time I’m just as sure as Daniel is that there’s something really amazing waiting around the corner for him. I’m just not quite sure how he would find it without actually getting up off the sofa and at least looking around that corner to see what’s there.

“If Dad won an award he’d thank the neighbors and the woman in Londis and that man who helped him fix his bike, and everyone who knows him, and everyone in the world.” Tilly can be merciless sometimes, but in the case of Daniel’s fabled long-windedness I think she probably has a fair point. “And then he’d probably tell them the story of how he had his first job at the age of eleven helping in his uncle’s hardware shop and didn’t even expect to get paid for it. In those days you just did it because you were expected to help out.”

Jamie laughed momentarily before remembering that Tilly had said it, so he was honor-bound to find it unfunny. Daniel meanwhile had no such reservations and was smiling good-naturedly. I know I probably shouldn’t say it, particularly not to you, but occasionally I do wonder if Daniel is all there, or if some tiny little bit of him, the bit that deals with, say, self-awareness, has somehow become dislodged and sneezed out somewhere along the way.

“What about Mum?” he asked, leaning his head back and running his hands through the overly long blond hair of which he remains justifiably proud. “What would Mum say in her acceptance speech?”