William Walkers First Year of Marriage (19 page)

As I open the door to find the phone book to call the police, Isabel takes the law into her own hands, throwing the dead chicken sculpture over the fence like she’s Fatima Whitbread in the Seoul Olympics, then walking through the door and slamming it confidently behind her. I point out that this is just as ridiculous as the play. She points out that she needs to sleep, and promptly passes out on the sofa.

The policeman is tapping his foot impatiently when I finally open the door at 7.30 a.m. the next morning. He says he is investigating reports of assault and vandalism. I say I have no idea what he is talking about, so he says I threw dead animals at our neighbour last night. I say I certainly did not and even if I did, it would only be a domestic. And he says no it wouldn’t and I say well you know what I mean.

‘Now look here, son,’ he says, which no one has said to me for at least two decades. ‘We don’t take kindly to troublemakers round here. First, you slander an upstanding member of the community, then you nearly run someone down on a footpath while cycling illegally and now you attack people with dead chickens.’

‘Do you have any independent witnesses?’

‘I’ll be keeping my eye on you from now on.’

‘Good day to you, officer.’

I have a hangover even though I didn’t drink anything. Isabel, diametrically, is fine. And she seems unperturbed by the fact that I now have a reputation as a troublemaker in the village even though it was she who threw the chicken crucifix at Primrose.

Andy calls to ask if I still need an emergency lime cordial and I explain that things have deteriorated significantly since then, but that the main issue has been resolved. Which is true. I am sexually competent again, although mentally adulterous.

I suggest that we should start drinking again: we have, after all, proved a point and cleaned out our systems. Andy says he plans never to drink again…his new girlfriend works for an NGO in Guiana dealing with the problems of alcoholism in the native communities. He has seen first-hand the effects of drink and he has decided to say no.

I decide to give it another couple of days. And find a new best friend.

Still hungover from all that lack of alcohol. Three weeks now. Where’s the bit where I feel great? I am actually woken this morning not by the cock a-crowing or the sheep a-baaing or the neighbour a-knitting-chicken-skin, but by the sound of my own irregular heartbeat. My whole central nervous system is shutting down.

Anastasia has sent early copies of her new
New York Times
section to poor little us at
L&T
. I’m surprised she found time, what with the number of pages she has to edit in the world’s greatest newspaper. And the number of articles she’s managed to write herself. Everyone loves the section, even though it looks like pretentious nonsense to me. Even the IT geek can’t hold back his enthusiasm.

‘I thought you’d prefer
Computer Mart Monthly
,’ I snap bitterly as he joins a syrupy conversation about how stunningly uncompromised the section’s production values are.

‘Oh, because I’m the IT geek, you think I can’t appreciate high culture?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say it was high—’

‘Just because I spend all day telling idiots like you how to switch on a computer?’

‘Well, now come on, that’s a bit—’

‘When was the last time you read Sartre, Camus, Molière, Descartes? When did you last reread
Du côté de chez Swann
or pondered the central despair in
La Prisonnière
?’

‘I’m not really into the, err, French—’

‘Goethe, Schiller, Brecht, Mann?’

‘Or German.’

‘Cáo Xu?eqín, Omar Khayyám, Svarupananda Desikar, Chikamatsu Monzaemon?’

I’m more into the, err, English—’

‘Trollope, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Milton, Chaucer?’

‘Yes, I’ve read
The Canterbury Tales
.’

‘When you were at school, I bet?’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘Sounds like you’ve got too much time on your hands.’

‘Philistine.’

‘Geek.’

The day deteriorates, as if that were possible…

I get another text from Saskia.

I get another mini heart attack even though, after almost a month alcohol-free, I am supposed to be feeling ten years younger.

I get another earful of domesticity from Isabel (I forgot to clean the bath but it was because, Your Honour, of the mini heart attack, but that’s just not good enough, but it won’t happen again, Your Honour, one strike and you’re out.)

I get a whole foot wet in a trick puddle.

I get shamed out of my train seat by a pretend pregnant woman.

I get another text from Saskia.

I have a drink. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh, Bisto.

And another. And another. And another. And two more strong ones.

Just as I am commenting to myself on the joys of binge-drinking, two of Isabel get home, both of whom look furious.

‘Hello, Isabels,’ I hiccup.

‘It’s eight o’clock.’

‘So?’

‘You said you’d meet me at the restaurant at half seven.’

‘Oh.’

I am escaping across a rickety bridge, but each time I reach the safety of the other side, a bungee padlocked around my waist pulls me back to the other side, the side where a girl who looks like
Saskia from behind but Isabel from the front keeps transforming into a giant spider every time I return. The harder I try to escape, the more swiftly I am bungeed back, the closer I get to the giant spider’s eight gnashing jaws. Even when the desperate urge to urinate wakes me, it still takes the trip to and from the bathroom to convince myself that my wife is not a giant spider.

‘Spiders don’t have eight mouths,’ is all Johnson has to offer by way of dream interpretation before joining me on another lengthy celebration of the end to our month’s abstinence. Twenty-two days is pretty damn near close enough if you ask us.

I wake up in the bath at four in the morning. The only reason I wake up is because the water is ice-cold and all five extremities are experiencing a strange tingling sensation. I scream quite piercingly. Isabel unimpressed.

Andy says the girl from Guiana isn’t the one, that giving up alcohol is not right and, besides, it’s England v. France this afternoon, and he’s got three tickets. Isabel still unimpressed.

Buy flowers for Isabel. Isabel pretends to be delighted but I can tell she’s unimpressed. Don’t care. The petrol station where I buy the paper only has limited choice, plus it’s supposed to be the thought that counts. And besides, I have had a tough month, what with the lack of alcohol, the sense of failure both at work and by nearly but
not quite fulfilling a resolution, the realisation and acceptance of the fact that I have had an affair, though only mentally, the continued suspicion that someone is out to wreck my marriage, and so forth.

At least the reassuring signs of persistent alcohol abuse have returned: foggy memory, red eyes, kidney ache, pre-coffee nausea, post-coffee nausea, monosyllabic wife.

I have become almost resigned to grim coincidences in the marriage-wrecker department. So the fact that the day after I buy a bunch of flowers thoughtfully for Isabel, albeit from a petrol station, Alex also buys a bunch of flowers for Isabel comes as no surprise. Nor does the fact that the flowers are at least six times as extravagant as mine and have never been near a petrol station in their flashy little lives.

I have to fight my way through them just to get into my own house, which is probably symbolic of something depressing. Isabel seems to think there is no need to explain them, or the note: ‘Chin up, babes, all will be well soon. Me xxx.’

‘He got you a bunch of triffids. I didn’t think you liked triffids.’ (A swing at the ball…)

‘Please don’t start, William. I’m not in the mood.’ (…and a miss. Strike one.)

‘It’s okay. All will be well soon. It says so in the note.’ (Another swing…)

Total silence. (…and another miss. Strike two.)

‘So are you two running off together at last?’ (He swings for the home run.)

‘I told him I was having a bad time at work. That’s what the flowers are about, since you’re obviously not going to drop it. And I told you as well, but you were too busy going off to get drunk
with your stupid friends to register it. You can be really selfish sometimes. I’m going over for dinner with my parents. See you later.’ (He misses, strike three, he skulks back to the dugout.)

Buy more flowers for Isabel. Six times bigger than the triffids. Mortgage job. Note says, ‘Sorry.’ And I really am. Of course she’s been having a bad time at work. And when she has a bad time at work, it’s really important. Because she cares about her job. I must remember that. I must remember that Isabel is doing her job for proper, altruistic, planet-saving reasons, not just for her own selfaggrandisement like the rest of us.

Still, the mortgage job flowers have been ignored, which is a bit rough. She doesn’t even mention them when I call to ask if she would like to meet for lunch. She then says she can’t meet because she’ll be checking into a Travelodge to have sex with Alex like she does every Tuesday lunchtime.

By being rendered speechless at such a disgusting thought, I apparently get myself into further trouble.

‘Jesus Christ, William. I was joking. This is getting ridiculous.’

If I’d laughed my head off at the hilarity of it all, she might not have hung up. And I might have still been on the phone to my wife when Saskia stormed into my office, which would have been even worse, I suppose.

‘YOU CAN’T JUST FINISH IT LIKE THAT,’ she begins, by way of hello. The production of a national magazine grinds to a halt as everyone swivels around on their stupid swivelly chairs to see who the girl with the seventeen-foot-long legs has come to kill. But before I have a chance to properly reflect on the disadvantages of an open-plan office, Saskia grabs my small plastic cup of water and throws it in my face.

For the second time in five minutes I am speechless, and for the second time in the same five minutes this is a bad idea.

‘HAVEN’T YOU GOT ANYTHING TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?’

‘Saskia, can you just calm down for a second?’

[Wrong again. Don’t engage with her, just tell her to get out of your office.]

‘CALM DOWN?! CALM DOWN!? I AM PERFECTLY CALM.’

‘You aren’t. You’re shouting.’

[Still wrong. Get perspective here. A madwoman has just stormed into your office.]

‘I’LL SHOUT IF I BLOODY WANT TO, YOU BASTARD. WALKING RIGHT BACK INTO MY LIFE, THEN PRETENDING I DON’T EXIST.’

‘I’m married.’

[Wrong because now, judging by all the raised eyebrows, everyone I work with suspects I’m having an affair. And it’s only aggravated her anyway.]

‘YOU CAN STILL BE FRIENDS WHEN YOU’RE MARRIED, YOU KNOW? OR DID YOU THINK I WAS ONLY FOR SEX?’

[That pretty much confirms everyone’s suspicions.]

‘No, you’re right. We can be friends.’

[Idiot.]

‘IT’S TOO LATE FOR THAT.’

‘It isn’t. It’s never too late.’

[I’m panicking now, saying any cliché that springs into my head.]

‘You’re a cruel man, William.’

[She’s stopped shouting now but she’s sobbing instead, which is worse.]

‘It’s not you, it’s me.’

[A woman crying is guaranteed to make a man say anything, absolutely anything, to stop the tears.]

‘I don’t understand what you want from me.’

[What I should have said at this point is, ‘Err, nothing except for you to get out of my office and never show your terrifyingly unpredictable face again, you bunny-boiling freak.’ But of course I didn’t say that.]

‘Let’s have dinner.’

‘Sure,’ she said, instantly happy again, as if the last five minutes never happened. ‘I’m free on Friday.’

And with that she struts out of the office like she’s in a shampoo advert, swivel chairs swivelling as she goes.

‘Never tell. Not if you love your wife…In fact, if your
old lady walks in on you, deny it. Yeah. Just flat out and
she’ll believe it: I’m tellin’ ya. This chick came downstairs
with a sign around her neck “Lay on Top of Me Or I’ll
Die.” I didn’t know what I was gonna do.’

L
ENNY
B
RUCE

Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot.

Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot.

Idiot.

I have told Isabel I am meeting Andy and I have told Andy to cover for me. He has told me I’m an idiot and I have told him I know. He thinks I should tell Isabel but I’m not going to because she’s already mad at me. Imagine what would happen if I actually gave her something to be mad about. Which, says Andy, confirms why I am an idiot. I tell him I just have to sort this out once and for all. He repeats his initial conclusion.

Johnson agrees with my strategy, which only makes me worry more.

I arrive first and immediately wish I had chosen the restaurant. It is not the sort of place you go to meet a friend: it is strewn with candles; an unobtrusive pianist is tickling the keys in the corner; and the table Saskia has reserved is not a table at all…it’s a bed. This is the sort of place bastards like Alex would take their married friends for a so-called innocent dinner. I make a note to introduce him to Saskia one day. Then I ask the waiter if we can move to one of the table-tables and he says they’re all booked.

‘Could you not swap us over?’ I plead. ‘I get indigestion if I eat lying down.’

‘Sorry sir. We’re always very careful not to put people who request a table in a bed. It might cause embarrassment.’

I spend the next ten minutes trying to work out whether it is safer to leave and risk another showdown at work, or stay and have a scene in a bed. I opt for the latter, then spend the next ten minutes trying to work out how to sit innocently on a bed surrounded by candles with a pianist tinkling away in the corner.

When Saskia arrives, I think at first that she is completely naked except for boots. Then, when I recover from the initial shock, it turns out that she is wearing a light-tan, figure-hugging dress that starts an inch below the waist and stops a millimetre above the nipple. Even Alex wouldn’t wear something quite so blatantly non-platonic.

‘Hello, Saskia,’ I say, standing up from my cross-legged position at the foot of the mattress.

‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she replies, and promptly presses her entire body against me and kisses me lingeringly on the lips.

I untangle myself and find I have received a text message: ‘Remember to get milk.’ Oh God.

Saskia then proceeds to crawl cat-like across the bed, claiming she never requested one but seeing as we had one we may as well enjoy it. She then plays with the idea of a Slippery Nipple before opting for a Martini. I attempt to de-sex the whole situation by ordering a beer.

‘Don’t be so boring, darling. You always have a beer.’

‘Beer’s fine,’ I say moodily.

‘Don’t be moody, darling. How was your day?’

‘Fine. Yours?’ I say nonchalantly.

‘Good, I had a Brazilian. I thought it was going to be agony but I actually enjoyed it.’

‘Excellent. Just the beef for me,’ I say to the waiter who looks as if he’s about to faint.

‘No starter, darling? My treat. Let’s have oysters. They make me hot.’

‘Rocket salad, thanks.’ The waiter has fainted.

By 10 p.m., I have still not found the opportunity to say my piece. The drink I have been necking has given me the frights rather than Dutch courage. And when Saskia slinks off to powder her breasts or whatever terrifying thing she does in a washroom and I am literally slapping myself in the face to steady my nerves (Japanese courage), there’s a voice.

‘William, you sly old dog. Didn’t think this would be your sort of place now you’ve become a country bumpkin.’

‘Tony. Hahahahahahahahahahaa. No. Not my place at all. How’s Jess?’

‘Jess is fine. Absolutely fine. Don’t see much of her actually. She’s always at marketing conferences. This is Jacques by the way. A friend.’

‘Oh right, hi Jacques.’

‘
Salut toi
.’

Before I can remark to myself at how right we were that Tony was gay and Jess was only using him as a baby-making aide, he has asked the question I had been dreading.

‘So, what have you done with Isabel? She powdering her nose?’

‘Err, no. She’s at home. I’m just having dinner with just a friend.’ Too many justs in that.

‘Oh right. You got a bed, I see. Good, aren’t they?’

At which point Saskia slinks back and arranges herself on my trembling shoulder.

‘Marvellous. I’m Saskia.’

I leave soon after, too hysterical to say anything other than no, I have to be getting home, thanks for a nice evening, see you around.
Before I get home, I have two new texts, one from Tony—‘I won’t tell if you won’t x’—and one from Saskia—‘Sorry we couldn’t really test the bed. Lunch next week? x’

And I forgot the bloody milk.

Whole weekend felt as though I was living a lie, which of course I was. Even though they had diametrically opposed views on the whole meeting-Saskia thing, both Andy and Johnson said they told me so. They also now agreed that I should meet Saskia once more and end it. Not that there was anything to end but I knew what they meant.

On the plus side, I had an uncharacteristically enjoyable Monday morning. First, the scarf woman slipped badly on the icy walkway outside the station, allowing the rest of us to proceed like grown-ups onto the train. Second, my coffee guy gave me my latte on the house just because it was a beautiful morning. Third, a robin followed me through an entire park singing songs. Fourth, a man shouting down his mobile phone had his mobile phone stolen by a guy on a bike. And fifth, a fire drill meant I missed an ideas meeting for which I had no ideas.

This is not how Monday mornings usually pan out. I decided to take it as a sign that my luck was changing. Or rather that my luck could change if I took action. As I made my way back up the stairwell, I resolved to sort my life out once and for all. True to my word, I sent Saskia the text I had spent the last forty-eight hours agonising over pointlessly: ‘Lunch fine. Alberto’s sandwich bar. Thursday. 1pm.’ And, true to her marriage-breakingness, she replied: ‘I love it when you talk decisive.’

‘What if, Mr Walker, you’re getting angry at the wrong things? What if you’re projecting?’

‘Come again, Harriet?’

‘It’s Ms Prestwick.’

‘Sorry. Come again, Ms Prestwick?’

‘You assault a work-placement student—’

‘I threw a cup of tea at her and it was cold and that was nearly six months ago. Couldn’t we move on?’

‘No, Mr Walker. Not until we’ve got closure on it.’

‘Have you been watching a lot of American TV in the last month, Harriet?’

‘Why would you get so angry with a work-placement student, Mr Walker? And why would you then get so angry with me making notes? Or a grumpy old woman pushing past you on a train?’

‘Because she’s annoying, Harriet.’

‘Yes, but don’t you think your level of annoyance is disproportionate to the thing you’re getting annoyed about? Is it possible that you might be angry about something else—something more fundamental—and attacking soft targets is your way of releasing that anger?’

‘What, you mean like he might be angry because he was beaten by nuns as a child?’

‘Thank you, Mr Schofield.’

‘Or he’s gay but can’t admit it so he’s living a lie so he shouts at traffic wardens who he secretly fancies?’

‘That’s enough, Mr Schofield…Come on, William. Share it with the group.’

‘You’re right, I admit it. I am a repressed cross-dresser. I wear women’s clothing whenever I can, which is not enough to satisfy
my transvestial urges. Hence frustration. Hence your note-making gets on my wick.’

‘Is it something to do with your marital relationship?’

‘I’m wearing suspenders right now.
Quod erat demonstrandum
.’

Of course, she could be right. Maybe traffic wardens aren’t annoying after all. Maybe if I sort out the two biggest problems in my life—Alex and Saskia—I will be able to have my car towed or vandalised or crushed without even the slightest hiccup in my blood pressure. Like Hannibal Lecter but without the Chianti or cannibalism. I owe it to the good hard-working clampers and policemen and turnip growers and plumbers and gym instructors and anger-management women and other irritations of this great nation to find out. More importantly, I owe it to my marriage.

‘Saskia, I don’t want us to be friends any more.’

‘This sounds exciting. What do you want us to be?’

‘I don’t want us to be anything. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to text you. I don’t want you to text me. I want you to text someone else, someone who isn’t married, someone who likes to have their ex-girlfriends stalking them for the rest of their lives because I don’t.’

‘So that’s it then, is it? It’s over, just like that.’

‘There is no it. There hasn’t been any it for years. Not an it any more. I don’t want you coming to my office and shouting at me. I don’t want you sending me socks or leaving me messages or flirting or commenting on my marriage or anything at all, ever.’

‘So our relationship was only ever about sex then, was it?’

‘Yes. Yes, it was. And even if it wasn’t, you can’t carry on being friends with people once you’ve finished with them. It’s just not practical or sensible or advisable.’

‘Dumped them, you mean.’

‘What?’

‘Well, you dumped me. Don’t be afraid to use the word now.’

‘We were never going out. We agreed it wasn’t working and you went to New York.’

‘You agreed. I went to New York. I never said I agreed. You never even stopped to ask me how I felt. You just assumed. All men do that but I thought you were different.’

‘Yes, well, fine. Anyway, that’s what I came to say and now I’m leaving.’

‘Okay, fine. If you want it like that, you can have it like that.’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine.’

Everyone was right—the direct approach actually does work.

I have been tricked into doing something I swore I would never do: I have joined a lottery syndicate. The office administrator said it would be a one-off on Wednesday because there was a £64 million jackpot so I agreed. Then it rolled over so she suggested we all try again. Tonight it’s another effing rollover and on Monday she’ll be round again, suggesting we continue. Like the Mafia, no one leaves a lottery syndicate. If you do, the syndicate immediately wins, and everyone except you—the idiot who just left the syndicate—pops champagne corks in front of an enormous cheque. Then they all resign, leaving you still penniless and doing everyone else’s job. Then the local news does an end-of-bulletin funny on the guy who left the syndicate just before it won and you have to kill yourself.

It’s something else to add to my list…