Sing Like You Know the Words (36 page)

-There´s nothing casual in how I
feel about Briony, David growled.

-You asked for my advice. Just
one more thing. Complete honesty is a great thing in human
relationships but it has its limits. I can see you´re not going to
leave Patricia. For god´s sake don´t say anything to her about
this. Confession´s just a coward´s way of shifting a burden off the
one who is in the wrong and dumping it on the other. The sinner
feels better because the deception is over, and the innocent party
feels like shit.

David scowled again.

-That´s it? That’s your
advice?

-That´s my objective advice that
I said you would ignore.

-It doesn’t feel like you’ve
described my situation at all.

-Of course not. So now tell me
your story: only do me a favour David and remember the last thing I
said.

If David remembered Matthew´s
advice he did not take it. Three weeks later, the crisis had broken
and the tearful lady researcher was out of their lives for good.
Later, David admitted to Matthew that he’d confessed the whole
thing to Patricia that same Sunday. He said that she seemed quite
dismissive of it, made him feel like he’d shown a lack of
discretion or committed a social gaffe rather than that he’d
destroyed his marriage. She refused to take seriously or even
discuss his protestations about his feelings for the girl, until
eventually he began to see for himself what an idiot he had made of
himself.

He said that he´d insisted on
sleeping downstairs on a couch, even though Patricia had laughed at
the empty gesture and told him he was being depressingly
conventional. But in the night, he heard her get up and go to the
bathroom. She was there a long time, he said and he had to lay
there listening to her sobbing. He told Matthew that he was
prepared to spend the rest of his life trying to be worthy of this
woman for standing by him when he had been so weak and useless.

It seemed ironic that David, so
pragmatic in his public life, should be the one who insisted there
could be no dirty secrets in his relationship, while Matthew,
supposedly the man of principle, preferred discretion to disclosure
in matters of the heart. And in the end, he reflected, I know
little enough myself about human happiness. I don’t know whether
David is a much better person than me, or just a complete
idiot.

He´d never said anything to
Patricia about his conversation with David that Sunday, and she´d
given him no reason to believe that David had confessed that
evening, even though two days later Matthew and Patricia were
sharing the same bed.

They weren´t actually having an
affair: in any case, both of them believed that to be true, however
the case might look from the outside. They met regularly. They were
old friends. David was away a lot; and even if Matthew had the
impression that the couple were not so close even when David was
home, that did not come into the equation. Almost always, their
liaisons were completely innocent, and even when they were not,
both Matthew and Patricia found it easy to revert to the behaviour
of friends next time they met.

Matthew never visited the
Oakland Ridge house when David was away any more. He and Patricia
met at lunchtimes, usually at their favourite restaurant. It was
natural since they both worked in the city. But Matthew´s flat was
very near, and sometimes it was easier to meet there. In fact the
thing that was spontaneous and almost an accident seemed to happen
only after that call from Patricia suggesting a changed venue.
Everyone in Matthew´s office apart from him knew that if the phone
rang on Tuesday at a certain hour, and he closed his door to take
the call, it meant that he would be anxious and irritable for the
rest of the morning.

Matthew thought of their
situation as regrettable but civilised, if he considered it at all.
Most of the time he managed to avoid thinking about it.

He remembered that on that
particular Tuesday afternoon, Patricia had been telling him
something about David and he´d been more irritated than usual at
having to spend so much time hearing about her husband. But it had
not been anything about the affair. She said that she had started
to worry about David.

-You mean, in case he should
find out about us? Why, has something happened? Matthew had willed
that his voice should not sound too anxious.

-Don’t be silly. There is no us;
you know that better than I do. I’m talking about this mystic faith
or belief that he has. It’s frightening sometimes.

In fact Matthew had noticed that
David´s personal mania about his purpose in the world had started
to take on an almost religious tinge, but what could he do about
it? With Patricia, there was always talk in the bed, and mostly he
could let it wash over him. He liked to hear the talk: it was never
like that with his girlfriends. He would have found bedtime
conversation with them off – putting, but with Patricia it was a
reassurance that what was happening was only cosy and safe. In fact
they often spoke about the girlfriends. It made Matthew smile to
hear Patricia steering him away from one girl, or suggesting that
he get closer to another. She could be so obvious about trying to
manipulate him that he believed himself immune to her
influence.

She would be talking to him
until just before the end, though he seldom remembered about what.
Then finally, she would become transformed into someone he had
never known and would never know. There was something dark and
animal about her orgasm, as if she was falling down to a black
secret place where he could not follow. For a moment he glimpsed
something dangerous, with sharp claws and teeth, and then he was
overtaken by his own animal self, demanding relief.

There was no sense of joining in
that moment of greatest intimacy; or if there was, then what was
joined was not their individual lives, but some part of them that
came from the deep and did not answer to their names. It was
impossible to say whether those were the moments when they
understood each other perfectly or only learned that they hardly
knew each other at all.

But after that less than a
minute of shared anonymity, silent and holy as it felt, Patricia
would pick up the thread of conversation again, and he was grateful
for it. Her cool dispassionate tones were a lifeline back to
himself, reassuring Matthew that the act had not been taken as a
promise giving the lie to the limits they had set. Patricia did not
want or need a future with him. They could be comfortable again
once she started to speak. What had just happened was reduced to a
manageable scale; as if they had gone to the theatre together, or
shared a meal.

Always and inevitably, the
conversation came back to David. Like this comment now about his
famously unshakeable self belief. Matthew was tired of hearing
about it, though he answered as reasonably as he could.

-David’s had this idea that it’s
his destiny to do important things for as long as either you or I
have known him. I thought you went along with it to be honest. If
he’s adding religion to the mix, I can’t say I’m surprised. Right
back when you two got together, I remember Tim predicting that
David might become the first atheist to be made a knight of the
Vatican.

-What did you say to that?

-I think I only said that he
wouldn’t be the first one by a long way.

They talked about other things,
but Patricia couldn´t leave this subject.

-Some of the things he says
sound so odd coming from him. I mean, you believe what you like at
home, or in private. But he wants to be in politics.

-You used to talk like that
yourself, Matthew reminded her. But yes, I read an interview where
he was talking about his faith being important to him. The
interviewer seemed embarrassed and couldn’t get off the subject
quick enough. It seemed odd at the time and it did make me wonder
what faith he was talking about. But we´re talking about David
here. You can assume that he´s worked out how it will play before
he said anything.

-He’s serious about it. I mean
he talks about “being received into the church” one day, and how it
might affect his political prospects; as if the world cared one way
or the other.

-It’s just another enthusiasm.
It will pass. What did you say to him?

-I said that if he announced a
conversion to Rome, it would make him look eccentric. Better to
wait until he’s finished with politics. I’m afraid I fell into that
pompous way of talking about it that he has

Matthew couldn´t resist.

-Patricia, you´re putting his
eternal soul in jeopardy. Imagine if he died before the glorious
day, unconfessed and damned, because you had made him put it
off.

-Don’t you start. I just don’t
want him to make himself look ridiculous. He wants to be seen as a
- conviction politician - I think they call it. It’s just some idea
he has picked up from American politics. We´re English after all.
It makes us uncomfortable when someone starts talking about
god.

-You’ve changed from the serious
Catholic girl I remember.

-It’s different for me. I grew
up with religion. It’s more of a habit than a conviction. I don´t
get carried away with it. Poor David, it’s niggling at him all the
time, even if he doesn’t admit it. He suggested going to mass with
me next week. I hadn´t even thought about going myself. It´s not
something I do usually. I don’t know how I should manage if he
became like that all the time. Nothing worse than a zealous convert
you know. They’re like those people that give up smoking.

-You gave up smoking.

-Well I’m not pious about it, I
hope. Anyway, I still do have an occasional cigarette, when no one
is around. I’m not very good at giving things up entirely, as you
know very well.

And she´d kissed him then.
Matthew couldn´t remember anything in their conversation that
suggested she´d only just discovered that her husband had been
sleeping with another woman, or that she´d spent a night crying
about it. But then, he couldn´t remember feeling any strong urge to
share David´s confidence with her. Both of them had known, without
either being aware that the other knew, and they kept the parts of
their lives in compartments that were sealed so tightly that even
the big things didn´t leak out. It´s exactly as Pat says, he
thought. I may write the news, but I never see what´s
happening.

It wasn´t long before they met
again. Patricia was feeling better, and it was nice to have Matthew
to talk to. She was alone so much otherwise, even with her many
friends; and the two of them had known each other for so long. It
was true that he was a hopeless idiot and had almost no
conversation of his own; but then that was probably why he was so
attractive to all these needy and wrecked women who latched on to
him. He gave them a mirror for their own lives; a flat, calm,
reflective surface. Then eventually they bored him and the trouble
started.

She was musing about it after
they finished, lying comfortably naked together. She thought that
feeling the warmth of another´s skin next to your own was one of
the best things.

-There’ll be a problem for you
one day, she told him. When you finally meet someone who isn’t
completely wrapped up in herself, you’ll have to talk about your
own feelings to fill the space. I wonder how you’ll manage.

Matthew didn´t answer, and there
was silence for a moment. Her thoughts turned back to David. That
trip to France, the break that he´d said they both needed, had
really set him off again. The spiritual thing wouldn´t leave him
alone, it seemed. They had driven across via Dover. The plan was to
fill the car with cheap champagne on the way back, and they had
spent a night in Rheims; a pretty town. It was David’s suggestion
that they visit the Cathedral.

The outside of the place was
merely beautiful. Inside was one of those impossibly high,
endlessly buttressed spaces that seem to exist outside of time,
bathed in the light of a different world. The way the sound carried
through the dry air was extraordinary. It was as though, in coming
through the door, they had entered a dimension that was almost but
not entirely the same as their own: every small detail held subtle
differences.

She had noticed straight away
that David was greatly affected. They didn´t pick up any of the
printed guides, but wandered around taking in everything at first
hand. Then they came to the great window that had been made by
Chagall. She supposed it was the brightness of it, the warmth of
the colour of the thing, that made it so special; but there was
something more. Humanity, she thought. Patricia could see and
respond to the power of it, but David was overwhelmed. He stood
before the window for minutes, looking up with tears rolling down
his face, oblivious of where he was.

Afterwards they took a coffee at
one of the pavement bars. They talked about the marvellous
cathedral and how inadequate speech was to describe it: impossible
to say anything at all without sinking into cliché and hyperbole.
You could only try to express fragments of emotion, that might echo
in the heart of someone close to you deeply enough for both to know
that they had shared the same feeling, even if the feeling itself
could not be spoken.

-We are close, still. Patricia
said to him. Strange to think of it now, in the arms of another
man. That makes me happy. But that window. It was something else
again. It did something more to you. I thought I could see it
fully, but you saw more than me.

-It was the angels, he answered.
I could see them. I was watching the angels dancing in the light
around the glass.

So far as she could tell, he was
completely serious. She worried about how it might affect their
futures; a politician of vision was one thing, but a politician who
saw visions was quite another. But in any case the world beyond
their own little lives was moving on.