Before She Met Me (6 page)

‘And—and what was it like?’

‘Well, the first time—that’s to say the second time altogether—it was … funny as much as anything. The … bloke was acting some sort of minor mafia person, but I knew—Ann had told me—that he came from the East End, so I was listening carefully, and he couldn’t even sustain the accent for more than three words in a row. And I thought, why couldn’t Ann have gone to bed with a better actor? And I sort of laughed at him, and I thought, well, I may not be Casanova, but I’m a sodding better academic than you’ll
ever
be a good actor. And I remembered Ann saying she thought he’d been doing shaving commercials lately, and I thought, poor sod, maybe that film was the high point of his professional career and he’s all twisted up with failure and envy and guilt and occasionally he’s standing in the dole queue and he finds himself thinking wistfully about Ann and what’s become of her, and when I came out of the cinema I thought, “Well, stuff
you
, matey,
stuff you
.”

‘The second time—the third time—I suppose that was the
puzzle. Why did I go back then? I just did. I felt I … ought to. I felt I had a hunch: a hunch about myself, that’s all I can say. I was probably in a funny mood, and I couldn’t work out why I was in the cinema anyway—this was when I’d rearranged the class—and I sat through the incredibly boring first half hour or so, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to feel but somehow I knew it wasn’t going to be the same as before. I suppose I should have left then.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Oh, some childhood puritanism about getting my money’s worth.’ Actually, that wasn’t right. ‘No, it was more than that. I tell you what I think it was: it was feeling I was near something dangerous. It was the expectation of not knowing what to expect. Does that sound—cerebral?’

‘A bit.’

‘Well it wasn’t. It was very physical in fact. I was trembling. I felt I was going to be let into a great secret. I felt I was going to be frightened. I felt like a child.’

There was a pause. Graham slurped at his coffee.

‘And were you frightened? Tumble-drier tum-tum?’

‘Sort of. It’s hard to explain. I wasn’t frightened
of
this fellow, I was frightened
about
him. I felt very aggressive, but in a completely unspecific way. I also felt I was going to be sick, but that was something separate, extra. I was very … upset, I suppose I’d say.’

‘Sounds like it. What about the last time?’

‘Same again. Same reactions in the same places. Just as strong.’

‘Did it wear off?’

‘Yes—in a way. But it just comes back whenever I think about it.’ He stopped. It felt as if he’d finished.

‘Well, since you don’t want my advice, I’ll give it you. I’d say, stop going to the movies. I didn’t know you liked them anyway.’

Graham didn’t seem to be listening.

‘You see, I told you about the
film
at such length because
it was the catalyst.
That
was what sparked it all off. I mean, obviously I knew about some of Ann’s chaps before me; I’d even met a few of them. Didn’t know them all, of course. But it was only
after
the film that I started to care about them. It suddenly began to hurt that Ann had been to bed with them. It suddenly felt like … I don’t know—adultery, I suppose. Isn’t that silly?’

‘It’s … unexpected.’ Jack deliberately didn’t look up. Bonkers was the first word that had come to mind.

‘It’s silly. But I’ve begun thinking about them all in a different way. I’ve begun caring about them. I lie in bed waiting to go to sleep and it’s like Richard the Third before that battle … Whichever one it was.’

‘Not your period?’

‘Not my period. And half the time I’m wanting to line them all up in my head and take a good look at them, and half the time I’m too afraid to let myself do so. There are some whose names I know, but I don’t know what they look like, and I just lie there filling in their faces, making up identikit pictures of them.’

‘Hmmm. Anything else?’

‘Well, I’ve tracked down a couple of other films Ann was in and gone to see them.’

‘How much have you told Ann?’

‘Not everything. Not about going to the films again. Just bits about getting upset.’

‘And what does she say?’

‘Oh, she says she’s sorry I’m jealous, or possessive, or whatever the right word is, but it’s quite unnecessary and it’s nothing she’s done—it isn’t, of course—and maybe I’m overworking. I’m not.’

‘Anything to be guilty about yourself? Any little naughties you might be transferring?’

‘Christ no. If I was faithful to Barbara for fifteen years or whatever, I wouldn’t be thinking of straying from Ann after this length of time.’

‘Sure.’

‘You don’t say that very convincingly.’

‘No, sure. In your case—
sure
.’ He did sound convincing now.

‘So what do I do?’

‘I thought you didn’t want advice?’

‘No, I mean, where am I? Is any of this familiar to you?’

‘Not really. I’m not too bad on current jealousies. I’m terrific on adultery—my type, not yours: I’ve got a good line of advice on
that
any time you need it. Well, all right … But stuff in the past I’m not so hot on.’ Jack paused. ‘Of course, you could get Ann to lie to you. Get her to tell you she hadn’t when she had.’

‘No. Anyway, you can’t do that. I’d never believe her when she told the truth.’

‘Suppose not.’ Jack thought he’d been very patient. He’d scarcely talked about himself for a long time. ‘It’s all a bit rarefied for me. Won’t make a short story, I’m afraid.’ It was odd how much people, even friends, imposed on you: just because you were a writer, they assumed you’d be interested in their problems.

‘So you’ve no suggestions?’ And then—having told you they don’t want advice, of course they do.

‘Well, if it was me, I expect I’d go out and bang some tart for a cure.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘How would that help?’

‘You’d be surprised how that helps. Cures everything. Everything from a mild headache to writer’s block. Very good for curing rows with the wife too.’

‘We don’t have rows.’

‘Not at all? Well, I’ll believe you. Sue and I row quite a bit. Always have—apart from the palmy days, of course. But then, we didn’t bother to make the bed in the palmy
days; only rowed about who should go on top.’ Graham’s glasses had cleared; he could see Jack taking breath for anecdote. He should have remembered that Jack’s attention, however protracted, was always conditional.

‘With Valerie—don’t think you ever met Val, did you?—I used to have rows all the time. Still, that was twenty years ago. But we used to have rows right from the start. Not your sort of milieu, old cunty; it was all
Room at the Top
and
A Kind of Loving
stuff. Hand up in the bus shelters. Trying to unsnap a suspender with two frozen fingers of your left hand when you’re right-handed, while pretending you’re really just stroking her thigh,
and
kissing her at the same time,
and
dropping your other mitt over her right shoulder and feeling for goodies. Makes it sound like bloody Clausewitz, doesn’t it? Not too far wrong, either, now I come to think of it.

‘So, first we’d have rows about where I put my hand when, how many fingers and so on. Then we finally had the Normandy landings, and I thought, well, okay, now the rows will stop. But they didn’t; instead we had rows about how often, and when and where, and is that a fresh packet, Jack, will you
please
check the date on the side. Can you imagine—switching on the light in the middle to check the date on the packet?

‘And after the Normandy landings, of course, we had the Battle of the Bulge. After we got married, of course. Then it was, should we, shouldn’t we, why don’t you get a proper job, look at this knitting pattern, and Margaret’s had three already. Five or six years of that was enough, I can tell you. Buggered off down here.’

‘What happened to Valerie?’

‘Oh, Val, she married a teacher. Bit of a wet-panter, nice enough. Likes the kids, which is useful for me. Checks the date on the packet every time, I’m sure.’

Graham wasn’t sure where Jack was leading, but he didn’t mind too much. He’d never been let into Lupton history
before: Jack’s declared policy of living only in the present involved a stylized forgetting of the past. If asked about his early life, he would either refer you to his fiction, or invent a baroque lie on the spur of the moment. Of course, there was no knowing whether he wasn’t even now trimming a myth to fit Graham’s particular needs. Though always frank, the novelist was never wholly sincere.

‘I thought I’d left the rows behind, up there with Val. When I met Sue, I thought, this is nice. No problem with the Normandy landings; well, there wouldn’t have been—it was a dozen years later and London, and they’d built the bloody Channel tunnel by then, old matey, hadn’t they? And Sue seemed less spiky than Val, at first. So we got married, and then, after a bit, guess what, the rows started. She’d begin by asking me what my role was, stuff like that. And I’d say, I’d like a role in bed with a little honey, please. And then we’d have a big row and I’d go off and have a bit of consolation, and then I’d come back and we’d have a row about
that
, so eventually I thought, well maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m unlivable with. That was when we thought it would be better if I had the flat in town and she lived in the country. Well, you remember that—it was only a few years ago.’

‘And?’

‘And, guess what? We have just as many rows as before. Well, fewer in one sense, I suppose, because we see less of each other. But I’d say the number of rows per hour of contact with each other has remained completely stable. And we’ve got particularly good at having shouting matches on the phone. We have big rows about as often as when we lived together. And when we do, I take exactly the same course afterwards. I ring up an old girlfriend and get me some consolation. It always works. That’s the thing I’ve discovered about what for want of a better word we may as well call adultery. It always works. If I were you, I’d go off and find myself a nice married woman.’

‘Most of the women I’ve slept with
have
been married,’
said Graham. ‘To me.’ He felt depressed. He hadn’t come to hear a version of Jack’s life story; though he certainly hadn’t minded hearing it. Nor had he come to learn about Jack’s own private remedies. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting I go off and commit adultery?’

Jack laughed.

‘Course I am. Second thoughts, course I’m not. You’re much too much of a guilt-ridden granny for that. And you’d be bound to go straight home to Ann and blab it out on her shoulder, and
that
wouldn’t do either of you any good or solve anything. No, all I’m saying is, that is your cross-eyed bear. Every marriage has a cross-eyed bear, and this is yours.’

Graham looked blankly at him.

‘Cross-eyed bear. Cross You’d Bear? Cross I’d Bear? Okay? Fuckit, Graham, we’ve both been married twice, we’re both practically clear of brain damage, we both thought about the whole thing each time before plunging into it. Now, four marriages tell us the honey time can’t last. So what can you do about it? I mean, you don’t think your present situation is Ann’s
fault
, do you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘And you don’t think it’s yours?’

‘No—I suppose I don’t think about it in terms of fault.’

‘Of course not. Quite right too. It’s in the nature of the beast, that’s what it is. It’s in the nature of marriage. It’s a design fault. There’ll always be something, and the best way to survive, if you want to survive, is identify it, isolate it, and always make a particular response to it when it occurs.’

‘Like you calling up an old girlfriend.’

‘Sure. But you won’t want to do that.’

‘I can’t think of anything relevant I might want to do. All I want to do is take a holiday from being inside my head.’

‘Well, there are ways. Do something irrelevant if you like, but do it seriously. Have a wank, get drunk, go and buy a new tie. Doesn’t matter what it is, just as long as you have
some way of fighting back. Otherwise it’ll get you down. Get you both down.’

Jack thought he was really doing quite well. He wasn’t used to acting as a problem page, and he’d been fairly convinced by the plot structure he’d presented to Graham at such short notice. He’d managed to impose some sort of pattern on both their lives as he went along. Still, that was his job, after all, wasn’t it: smelting order out of chaos, rendering fear and panic and agony and passion down into two hundred pages and six quid ninety-five. That was what he was paid to do, so this wasn’t too hard a sideline. The percentage of lying was about the same as well.

Graham decided, though without much optimism, to think over what Jack had said. He’d always considered Jack more experienced than himself. Was he? They’d both been married twice, they’d both read about the same amount, they were of about the same intelligence. So why did he consider Jack an authority? Partly because Jack wrote books, and Graham respected books in both an abstract and a practical way, acknowledged a gut deference to their jurisdiction. And partly because Jack had had millions of affairs; always seemed to have a new girl in tow. Not that this necessarily made him an authority on marriage. But then, who was? Mickey Rooney? Zsa Zsa Gabor? Some Turkish sultan or other?

‘Or … ‘ said Jack. He was rubbing his beard and looking almost as serious as he could.

‘Yes …?’

‘Well, there’s always one solution …’ Graham sat up straighter in his chair. This was what he’d come for. Of
course
, Jack would know what to do, would know the right answer. That was why he’d come here; he knew he was right to come. ‘… You should love her less.’

‘What?’

‘Love her less. May sound a bit old-fashioned, but it’d work. You don’t have to hate her or dislike her or anything
—don’t go over the edge. Just learn to detach yourself a little. Be her friend if you like. Love her less.’

Graham hesitated. He didn’t quite know where to begin. Eventually he said,