Unfaithfully Yours (5 page)

You really do not want to hear about Elizabeth and me. Not the whole story. We kind of get along okay, I suppose, but certain things have happened . . . Me and . . . well . . . me and her and Julia and that business with Conrad and the cider. Jesus!

I must have missed the gudgeon programmes. When did you say they were on? I caught something about stickleback a few years ago – or was that made by some foreign geezer? Apparently the male stickleback looks after the children full time. What a fucking tosser!

What did happen to Pamela? I’ve been ringing round trying to find out if anyone has any info but absolutely no luck. Maybe you’re still in touch with the dreaded Dr John ‘Hands Off My Halo’ Goldsmith. I seem to remember you two got on okay. I assume he still lives in Putney but I seem to have managed to keep out of his way for twenty years. To my surprise, I find I still have the bastard’s number but I draw the line at picking up the phone and calling him.

What about these ‘suspicious circumstances’, then? It obviously wasn’t the big C. I got the impression from your letter that it all just came in one wallop. Heart attack? Was she run over by a lorry? Was it bacterial meningitis? A mate of mine had that. We were on the tennis court at eleven. At around lunchtime he had a headache and by the time
Newsnight
came on he was in the old sliding drawer at the hospital morgue.

Don’t want to sound ghoulish but I really would like to know. I mean, if it was so ghastly you really cannot bear to talk about it please forget I ever asked. Maybe you reversed over her while she was standing in the drive of your house. I damn near did that with Conrad when he was about five. I can still see him looking up at me in his Osh Kosh dungarees, as I hurtled towards him in the Volvo. The expression on his face was so piteous I was minded to keep my foot on the accelerator and spare the little bastard the misery so clearly in store for him over the next twenty-odd years.

Do try and let me know how old Pam got her dismissal notice. I don’t know why but I sort of feel the details would help me come to terms with it. I don’t need twelve pages on how she bled out during major surgery at Kingston Hospital. Just a word or two, if that’s all you can manage. ‘Brain haemorrhage’. ‘Traffic accident’. That’s all you have to write. And if you’re fed up with this correspondence and find writing letters as tedious and unusual as I do – call me or drop me an email.

All best

Gerry

PS You don’t mention them in your letter so I suppose you’ve lost touch with John and Barbara Goldsmith. John G swore he would knock me down if he ever set eyes on me again. If I ever do run into him, I hope to give him the chance to try. Let him make one move and I’ll alter his face so considerably that no woman in Putney will ever again describe him as a DILF – Doctor I would Like to Fuck.

From the overgrown back garden at

24 Lawson fucking Crescent

Putney Les Deux Arseholes

10 August

To the no-doubt immaculate luxury mansion of

Sir Gerald the Invincible OM, VC, etc.

112 Heathland Avenue

SW396 Very Superior Postcode

Christ, Gerry!

You are unbelievable. You are fucking unbelievable. I don’t know why you are the way you are. I seem to remember meeting your mother once, back in the days when we all used to socialize together, and thinking she was quite a pleasant woman. You, however, are and have always been a complete and utter cunt.

I tried, when you wrote to me, to reply pleasantly. I thought maybe I could handle communication with you by letter – at least in writing a letter you have time to stop and think about what you’re going to say – but here I am, in spite of all my good intentions, scribbling away, unpacking my heart like a very drab to let you know what I really think of you.

I don’t know how you have managed to get away with it for so long. Some people seem, actually, to like you. But I know you’re a cunt. I think you know it too. I think deep down you’re aware of what a cunt you are; perhaps that is your strength. Perhaps, like Stalin and Hitler, you know how to walk the narrow line that divides truth from falsehood, insult from compliment, mateyness from hostility. You give people just enough hope there might be a decent person lurking under that façade of crudity, racism, selfishness and deliberately contrived ignorance to entice them into treating you as a human being. I think it’s time someone pointed out a few simple facts to you. Such as – you are a cunt.

‘That’s Gerry!’ is what people in Putney used to say about you in the old days. ‘He does that! Yeah. He sticks champagne bottles into the groins of his friends’ wives because . . . well . . . he does that!’ I always remember you saying at one of those first ghastly dinner parties you gave, ‘Oh, Mike Larner is built like a bottle of Beaujolais!’

I was supposed to take it in good part and laugh. Very funny. Mike Larner was not one of the boys. He wasn’t John Goldsmith, the most handsome GP in south-west London. He wasn’t even, really, in a league with chunky bluff northerner Sam Dimmock, dentist with the biggest beard in SW15. He was just the vaguely effeminate guy with the sloping shoulders who did a programme about gudgeon that nobody ever watched! And old Gerry Price was . . . you know . . . a bit tactless but that was good old Gerry. Who never really thinks about what he says, just comes out with it!

But, of course, your offensiveness is not simply ignorance. You are a highly intelligent individual. Everything you do is done for a reason. Everything you do is done for the greater good of Gerry Price. Letters of condolence that are not, really, letters of condolence, or insults disguised as compliments or any of the other tricks you have up your lawyer’s sleeve are all there to progress the only cause in which you really have a firm belief – you.

You’re cautious too, aren’t you? Do you remember when I reversed into that car in Montserrat Road and I was about to drive away? You said, ‘No – leave a note under their windscreen. Put a false address and disguise your handwriting! You don’t want some busybody reporting you to the cops!’

I sometimes wondered, in the days when we all went on holidays together, whether you might be shagging Pamela. You are, really, just like a great big red penis, aren’t you? And although women – especially pseudo-feminists like Pamela – like to pretend they’re not interested in great big red penises, in fact they probably think about little else – especially when locked up in a Mediterranean villa for two weeks.

I don’t think so, though. I think Mary Dimmock was the most smitten. I can remember her on the beach at Quinta da Praia, watching you smother yourself in sunscreen. I think Pamela and Barbara Goldsmith and, even, perhaps, your long-suffering wife had had enough of the ape-man routine by day three of each holiday.

Pamela and I didn’t always have an easy time of it, but we loved each other. We talked, Gerry. We talked about life and art and politics and design and, yes, fish. Pamela supported me throughout the making of my gudgeon films and, when I was in real despair about getting the kind of screen time I thought the fish deserved, she was there for me. We were friends, Gerry – something I’m not sure you and Elizabeth ever were. I miss her more than I can say.

Don’t bother writing to me again. I won’t reply. Don’t bother to try to find out my number either. I’m getting rid of my phone – partly to avoid the possibility of people like you calling me.

Mike

From the desk of

Gerald Price QC

112 Heathland Avenue

Putney, SW15 3LE

12 August

To

Michael Larner

24 Lawson Crescent

Putney

Whoa there, tiger!

I did try door-stepping you, old boy, because I thought you sounded in a bad way. From the look of your front garden you’re seriously in need of a bit of the old psychotherapy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a privet hedge in quite such distress.

All the curtains seemed to be closed too. I hope you haven’t gone and topped yourself,
mon brave
. And if you have, can I not be the one who breaks in through the downstairs window and finds you rotting away in front of Sky Atlantic?

Look, I’m sorry if I behaved like an oaf. I am an oaf,
cher Michel
. A full-time oaf. It’s how I am. It’s what I do. I can’t help it. I really would like to know how dear old Pamela died. I feel quite upset about it.

Were the police involved on the ‘awful night in November’? And was old Norman just talking balls about ‘suspicious circumstances’? If there had been a murder inquiry or anything I suppose it would have been in the papers, but she just seems to have popped off without anyone really knowing quite how. Or, indeed, when! Was it November 2002? Or November 2003? I keep trying to think where I was ten years ago but all I can recall about that period of my life is that Conrad was an adolescent, which is why I have probably so effectively suppressed all memories of the period. I know we have had our differences but, for the record, I would like to state that Beaujolais is a highly entertaining and fruity wine that comes in rather beautifully shaped bottles.

Really all my best,

Gerry

PS This summer has – if I’m honest – been a pretty intense one for Gerald Price QC. I am not all penis, old thing – although I will grant you that Percy does tend to run my life. I can’t go into the full emotional dossier now but it has to do with a production of
Hamlet
in which I am due to ‘open’ – as we say – in September and a pretty heavy bit of cruising at the Waitrose cheese counter in Putney Shopping Centre. If you want to see sex in the raw try to get along to St Jude’s Church Hall in September where you will see yours truly in the old black tights. Jude Law, be warned! I bet my cock’s even more impressive in close-fitting doublet than yours!

PPS Talking of being a nut bag (no offence, Mike), I’ve been having the feeling, just lately, that someone is following me. Is this something to do with being a sixtysomething? Or do you think some woman is trying to get her hands on my love stick?

PPPS If Pam’s death was murder – do you have any idea who might have done it?

From A Worried Woman of Putney:

I do not wish to give my real name or address but

am prepared to supply if necessary. This is a
genuine

enquiry!

15 August

To:

Dr Wise, c/o His Column in the
Putney Guardian
, which

I read with great pleasure

Dear ‘Dr Wise’,

Though I am sure that is not your real name. I know it says in the paper that you are a genuine doctor but I do not believe anything I read in the papers.

Why then, you may ask, am I writing in to your column?

Because, whoever you are – even if you are actually three different reporters working for the
Putney Guardian
– the answers you give to people’s problems really sound genuine and sincere and thoughtful and kind. It is so important to be kind, isn’t it? The answer you gave to the woman who was having a discharge from her vagina was so sweet and tasteful. What you wrote to the man whose wife was having an affair with his father and two of his brothers was moving and gentle and intelligent and full of sound, practical advice.

I have many, many problems, Dr Wise. I am a person with an artistic temperament, trapped in a marriage to a man who does not really understand my needs and aspirations. I do not know whether you have read
Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert. It is a wonderful, wonderful novel and when I read it I cried aloud to the empty room in which I was sitting at the time ‘
Madame Bovary – c’est moi!
’ It is – though I am sure you know this, Dr Wise – a French book.

I am married to a dentist. This is the first of my problems. And, while I am interested in painting and music and ballet and theatre and the novels of Ian McEwan (I hope I am spelling that correctly), he is really only ever excited by teeth. In the early years of our marriage, when we made love he would quite often break off to examine a suspect molar or a dodgy bicuspid. When he says – as he still does after many years of marriage – that I have a lovely mouth, it is not because he wants to kiss it. From the way he looks at me I can tell he cannot wait to force it open, lay pieces of cotton wool along my gums and get to work with his miniature pitchfork and odiously intrusive silvered-mirror-on-a-stick!

He never folds me in his arms, Doctor, and whispers the words all women long to hear from a man. He has never been anything less than respectful but we have not had sexual intercourse since 12 August 1981. I am not even sure that that is the right way to describe what happened on that particular occasion – although it is etched in my mind with the vividness of a Daumier
engravure
(if that is the right word).

Gradually, Doctor, as he has lost interest in me, I have found myself drawn to other men. Although my husband is a well-built and handsome individual, with a particularly striking beard, I have found my eyes wandering. Many years ago while on a mixed villa holiday in Portugal – I have long since lost contact with the other couples involved – I found myself excited by the sight of one of our party. He was a distinguished lawyer, thrusting and powerful in conversation, but he was also a superb physical specimen. In the early morning, after a swim in the villa pool, he would do gymnastics on the lawn of the property and I was quite often weak at the knees at the sight of him balancing on one hand and moving his well-formed legs in a slow scissor motion. His buttocks were particularly beautifully shaped and in the wet swimming trunks he often seemed to be wearing, even at lunch, he was a powerful spectacle for a woman in her thirties.

Quite by chance I ran into him again, quite recently, as he joined a drama club to which I belong and we both gained prominent roles in a forthcoming production of a Shakespeare play. I talked with him about the old days and, though we were friendly and even slightly flirtatious, I did not feel the passion that had once so disturbed me.