Before She Met Me (12 page)

Graham didn’t speak.

‘Told you about our little fling. Our bit of extra-curricular. Very fine thing, a bit of honesty between husband and wife, I always say. I’m sure your marriage is the envy of most of your friends, Graham.’

Pitter gave an insincere, teeth-together smile; Graham didn’t comment.

‘Course, there is such a thing as too much honesty, isn’t there? I mean, what’s more important, Graham, your husband’s good opinion of you, or telling everything just exactly like it was? Tricky one that, isn’t it?

‘Anyway, I’m sure Ann did quite the right thing at the time. Told you about me, didn’t tell you why we called her the Carwash Girl.’ The three villains behind him chuckled. ‘Now, stop me if I’m boring you, Graham, but you see, what she really liked wasn’t just me. It was all of us. All of us at the same time. Doing different things to her. I won’t be specific, I know these things can be hurtful; I’ll just leave you to imagine it. But the first time she got us all to do things to her at the same time, we were all sort of swarming over her, licking her and stuff, she said it was just like being in a carwash. So we called her the Carwash Girl. And we used to giggle about what would happen when she met Mister Right. Only we used to call
him
Mister Carwash. I mean, she
made it quite plain that it was the more the merrier as far as she was concerned. And how would any husband cope with that, we wondered. Unless, of course, there’s more to you than meets the eye.’ Pitter grinned.

‘But anyway,’ he went on, taking an avuncular tone, ‘women change. They do, don’t they? Maybe she’ll get back to liking one fellow at a time. Then you won’t need to feel so inadequate, will you? Won’t need to feel that however good you are she’ll always be dreaming of that extra oomph. You never can tell, it might work out like that. So what I’m really saying, Mister Carwash, is that the boys and me wish you the best of British. We really do. We think you’ve drawn a pretty short straw, and we just hope you manage to play your cards right.’

Then all four of them leaned across the desk and shook him by the hand. He didn’t want to accept any of the outstretched palms which had once caressed the racked body of his wife, but found himself unable to draw back. The men seemed full of sympathy for him; one of them even winked.

What if it were true? Graham had woken up in a silent, taut-muscled panic. What if it were true? It couldn’t be true. He knew Ann too well. They’d even—haltingly—discussed their sexual fantasies with each other, and she’d never mentioned
that
. But then, of course, if she’d already done it, it wouldn’t be a fantasy any more, would it? No, it couldn’t be true. But what if it referred to a sort of truth? Did he feel confident that he satisfied her? No. Yes. No. Yes. Don’t know. Well, what about tonight, for instance—that was all for you, wasn’t it? Yes, but there’s no rule that you both have to come every time, is there? Of course not, but she didn’t exactly seem overwhelmed by your caresses, did she? No, but that’s all right, too. It may be
all right
, you may have talked about it and agreed it was
all right
, but that’s not how sex works, is it? It’s where the unsayable is king; it’s where madness and surprise rule; it’s where the cheques
you write for ecstasy are drawn on the bank of despair.

Graham slowly debated himself to sleep again.

But Larry Pitter, as he might have guessed, didn’t go away with waking up. He hung around in some back alley of Graham’s brain, a half-seen figure slouched against a lamppost, taking his time, smoking a fag, ready to saunter out and trip Graham up when he felt like it.

Graham decided to drive to work that morning; he had only two hours’ teaching and could leave the car on a meter. As he set off, rain began spotting the windscreen. He turned on his wipers, then his washers, then his car radio. Something bracing and carefree emerged; perhaps it was a Rossini string sonata. He felt a surge of gratitude, a paperback historian’s thrill, for living at this particular time. Easy travel, protection from the weather, button culture: Graham suddenly felt as if all such benefits had only just arrived, as if only yesterday he’d been a berry-eater on Box Hill who ran for cover at the gentlest goat’s bray.

He drove past a garage on the opposite side of the road:

and the day was gone, destroyed. Larry Pitter had sidled out of his alley and slyly removed a manhole cover; Graham, head up, whistling, feeling the sun on his face, had walked straight into it.

The Rossini continued but Graham thought only of Ann lying on her back encouraging the four men. They were lined up side by side at right angles to her body, each licking a swath, like four motor mowers moving over her. Graham shook his head to expel the image, and concentrated on
driving; but the picture, though rebuked and diminished, continued mockingly at the edge of his vision, up in the rear-view mirror.

He found himself watching the road for garages. At each he instinctively flicked an eye down the rows of signs, looking for the one that said
CARWASH
. Mostly, they didn’t; and each one that didn’t made Graham feel elated, as if all his suspicions of adultery had been proved false. Then he would pass the eighth or ninth garage, with its contemptuously informative sign, and the image in the rear-view mirror would sharpen. Now, he could see his wife urging the four men to make their different uses of her. Three took the obvious channels; the fourth squatted in the corner of the mirror like a distempered satyr and pulled on his cock. Graham forced his attention back to the road. The rain had slackened off, and with every sweep the wipers were now depositing some of their own dirt back on the screen. Automatically, Graham reached out and pressed the windscreen washer. A burst of bubbly opaque liquid hit the glass in front of his face. He should have known better. Up in the mirror the satyr was coming.

Graham spent twenty minutes of his first class looking at his male students and wondering if any of them wanted to go into films and commit adultery with his wife. Then this struck even him as comical, and he went back to expounding a tentatively revisionist view of Balfour. After a couple of hours he emerged, walked to his car, and gazed at the windscreen washer nozzles on the bonnet as if they were instruments of adultery. An enervating sadness began to creep through him. He bought a racing edition of the
Evening Standard
and checked through the films. Maybe he should see something that didn’t have his wife in for a change. What about the new Jancso not starring his wife, the new inter-galactic battleorama not starring his wife, or the new British road movie about hitch-hiking to Wrexham, definitely not starring his wife?

Not a single one of his wife’s films was showing. Not one. Graham felt as if a branch of the social services which particularly affected him had suddenly been withdrawn. Did they realize the effects of their cuts? He couldn’t, today, go to any cinema in London or its immediate suburbs and see a film in which his wife committed adultery; nor could he see any film in which his wife, though remaining chaste onscreen, had committed adultery offscreen with one of the actors. The two categories, he noticed, were beginning to get blurred in his head.

That left two further categories of film he could still catch up on: other films featuring actors with whom his wife had committed adultery onscreen (but not off); and other films featuring actors with whom his wife had committed adultery offscreen (but not on). He checked through the
Evening Standard
again. This time the choice was limited to two: Rick Fateman in
Sadismo
at Muswell Hill (on but not off); or Larry Pitter in a remake of
The Sleeping Tiger
 … Graham suddenly realized that he couldn’t remember whether or not Ann actually had committed adultery with Pitter. Onscreen, yes, of course, that was what had driven him, turbulent with jealousy, to Turnpike Lane and Romford in the last few days. But offscreen? He knew he’d asked her, months ago, but found he simply couldn’t remember the answer. This struck him as very strange.

Maybe
The Sleeping Tiger
would help him out. He drove to Swiss Cottage in a state of vivid curiosity. In the remake, Pitter played the psychiatrist who brings home a green-haired girl punk and employs her as an au pair; the girl seduces his wife, tries to rape his ten-year-old son, slashes his cats’ throats with a razor, and then unexpectedly returns home to her mother. The wife has a nervous breakdown and the husband discovers he is homosexual. A sort of truth is attained through the experience of deep pain. The young English director displayed his homage to the early, pseudonymous Losey with several caressing shots of banisters and
staircases. Pitter at one point attempted to dally with the object of his research and, to Graham’s delight, received a swift kick in the balls.

Graham came out of the cinema as excited as he had gone in. Realizing that he didn’t know whether or not Ann
had
committed adultery with Pitter made him feel keenly alive. As he drove home, one or two methods of killing Pitter sauntered into his head, but he dismissed them as idle fantasies. What he was on to now was much more important, much more real.

At home, he carefully stabbed the steaks and poked pieces of garlic into the incisions. He laid the table, adding candlesticks at the last moment. He got out the rarely-used ice bucket and broke some ice into it for Ann’s gin and tonic. He was whistling as she opened the front door. When she walked into the dining-room he kissed her unambiguously on the lips and handed her a drink, followed by a bowl of shelled pistachio nuts. He hadn’t been like this for weeks.

‘Has something happened?’

‘No, nothing special.’ But he looked a little furtive as he said it. Maybe something had happened at work; maybe Alice had done well at school; maybe he just felt unaccountably better. All through dinner he remained in good spirits. Then, over coffee, he finally said,

‘What happened today hasn’t happened before.’ He sounded as if he were slowly unwrapping a present for Ann. ‘Never before. It was most instructive.’ He smiled at her with puzzling gentleness. ‘I forgot whether or not you’d gone to bed with Larry Pitter.’ He looked across at her, expecting approval.

‘So?’ Ann felt her stomach beginning to contract with apprehension.

‘So. So, it’s never happened before. Every one of … of the others I’ve always remembered. Everyone you … fucked.’ He used the word with deliberation. ‘Whether you did it on or off. Even when you did it neither, like with Buck Skelton.
Every minute of the day, if someone stopped me and said, “Give me a list of all the other men your wife has fucked,” I could do so. I really could. And then I’d say, “And there are some more, the other categories.” I could remember all those as well, all of them. I once found myself automatically marking up a student simply because he was called Kerrigan—because Jim Kerrigan never made a pass at you in
The Cheapest Place in Town?’

Ann strained a smile through her face and waited.

‘So what this may mean is that I’m beginning to forget.’

‘Yes, I suppose it may.’ But Graham looked excited rather than relieved, she thought.

‘Go on then.’

‘Go on what?’

‘Test me.’

‘Test you?’

‘Yes. See how much I remember. “Have I fucked so-and-so?”, that sort of thing. “Who played the second male lead in what film whom I fucked onscreen but not off?” Go on, it sounds like a good game.’

‘Are you drunk?’ Maybe he’d had a few before she got home.

‘Not at all. Not in the least.’ He certainly didn’t look it: he looked bright, cheerful, happy.

‘Then all I can say is I think it’s the sickest suggestion I’ve ever heard.’

‘Oh, come on. Be a sport. Homo ludens, etcetera.’

‘You are serious, aren’t you?’

‘I’m serious about playing games, yes.’

Ann said quietly, ‘I think you’re mad.’

Graham didn’t seem at all put out.

‘No, I’m not mad. I just find it all very interesting. I mean, I was so surprised today, when I couldn’t remember, that I went off to see
The Sleeping Tiger?’

‘What’s that?’

‘What do you mean? It’s Larry Pitter’s last film but one.’

‘Why should I be interested in Larry Pitter’s films?’

‘Because he didn’t, or as the case may be, did, fuck you; definitely onscreen in
The Rumpus
, and offscreen, well, that’s what this is all about.’

‘You went to see some film with Pitter in it?’ Ann was amazed; appalled. ‘Why?’

‘The Sleeping Tiger
. To see if it would jog my memory.’

‘Ah. On locally, was it?’

‘Swiss Cottage.’

‘Graham, that’s miles out of anyone’s way. All for some crappy film with Pitter in it. You must be crazy.’

Graham wasn’t in the least deterred. He looked across at his wife with unequivocal tenderness.

‘Wait, wait. The point was, I sat all the way through
The Sleeping Tiger
and at the end I was still no nearer remembering. I looked at Larry Pitter’s face every time it came on the screen and I simply couldn’t remember whether or not I wanted to kill him. It was very odd.’

‘Well, I suppose if it makes you feel better in some way, that’s a start.’

Graham paused, then said slowly,

‘I don’t know about better.’ Ann was getting more and more lost. ‘No, I wouldn’t say better. I’d say different. It’s a new twist, you see. And I’m wondering why, if my brain chose to forget one of them, it should pick on Larry Pitter. What’s Pitter got, or not got, that the others haven’t?’

‘Graham, I think this is worrying. I’ve always been able to understand you before. Now I can’t. It used to upset you when we talked about my old boyfriends. It always upsets me. Now it just … it just seems to excite you in some way.’

‘Only this Pitter business. It’s as if I hadn’t ever known in the first place. It’s really as if I’m about to discover for the first time whether or not you’ve fucked Larry Pitter.’