Infidelity (15 page)

Philip frowned and spread his hands, palms outward. ‘Enough said. I'm sorry if I sounded like the official representative of the cautious side of the family.'

‘Let's walk,' I said, ‘and I'll tell you a very different story. About my brilliant career.'

We explored the treasures of Henley, ancient and modern, and Philip invited me back to his flat for dinner. He was an accomplished cook and might once have chosen to become a chef rather than a doctor. Sarah's name was not mentioned again.

‘Nice part of London,' he said, raising an eyebrow, as he dropped me back to Vincent Square at midnight. ‘Sure you can afford it?'

18

O
n Friday and Saturday nights, I prowled around the apartment, never quite relaxing into it. I had discovered it was a place where I could only feel really comfortable when Sarah was present. When she was away, I was even unsure whether to sleep in the guest room or in her bed (still a long way from being ‘our' bed). I usually opted for the guest room – when it came to Mrs Hepworth's ministrations, nothing made sheets look slept in like sleeping in them.

Sunday nights were often tricky, the joy of being reunited tempered by Sarah's tendency towards scratchiness. I tried hard to understand that aspect of our relationship, though I never fully came to terms with it. She used the return trip to London each week to clear the weekend's miseries out of her system, whereas I came to our reunions from nothing more demanding than a weekend spent wondering how to pass the time until I could see her again.

On the Sunday before Easter, we were both tired. Sarah's train had been delayed and she arrived at the apartment almost an hour later than usual. I had restrained myself from asking about her weekend and she had shown little interest in my day on the river with Philip. Other matters were more pressing than pleasantries: on top of her heavy pre-Easter teaching schedule, there was an intimidating pile of unmarked essays on the dining table.

She reminded me that Easter week contained a first Wednesday. It was Jelly's turn to be host and, with a tight little smile, she said she was bracing herself for a rave review about my work at Blair. She was planning to leave for Guildford on the Thursday morning, getting settled at Littleton before returning to the cathedral in Guildford for the Maundy Thursday service. Would I be prepared to take her mother out for the ritual Thursday lunch? I consented without much enthusiasm.

I was beginning to grasp how seriously Sarah took the liturgical cycle of Easter – she had a copy of each day's program of services stuck on the fridge and was anticipating the whole thing with evident relish. She was urging me to get into the festival spirit too – at least to attend a service at St Peter's while I was in Winchcombe. (I was surprised she even knew of the church. I only knew of it myself because I had inspected it, horror-show gargoyles and all, as a dutiful tourist on my last visit to Amanda's.)

Sarah's enthusiasm was heightened by her anticipation of the cathedral's Easter preacher who, she told me, didn't believe a word of the resurrection story in a literal sense. He was a true scholar, she said with approval, and therefore bound to be sceptical.

She mentioned yet another ritual – Easter Monday was to be spent at the Compton Fair, where she would have a chance to catch up with her old chums from the days when she had been a more engaged villager.

So it would be Easter Monday afternoon before she could return to London. How would that suit my plans? I assured her I would be waiting for her when she returned to Vincent Square. My own Easter schedule was simplicity itself – I was planning to travel to Winchcombe on Good Friday to spend the weekend with Amanda and her family, returning to London on the Sunday night.

I poured us both a drink with no sense of celebration. I was wishing I could share Sarah's eagerness at the approach of Easter, but I could think only of five days without her – our longest separation since the day I moved in. I briefly entertained the idea of visiting Guildford myself to witness all this liturgical colour and movement laced with sceptical theology, but decided it would be unwise to mention that thought to Sarah.

While Sarah was sorting out some lecture notes, my mind wandered to the challenges at Blair, where the Death Rey had become decidedly chilly in her attitude to me – not surprising, really, considering that I had dared to criticise the whole concept on which her business model was based and had studiously avoided her request to develop a training program for the young scorers. Instead, I had been quietly developing my own ideas about how the entire Blair model might be recast. I wanted to be fully prepared when Jelly finally summoned me for a review.

Following our interview, Jennifer had twice called me into her office to enquire about progress on the plan for ‘those master classes', as she had taken to calling the proposed tutorials, possibly in an attempt to flatter me into some enthusiasm for the project. Both times, I had deflected her questions with protestations about my workload and suggested we really should sit down together to discuss the broader issue. She had responded to that suggestion as if she hadn't heard it.

It was tempting to call Jelly and explain my little dilemma to him, but he had been clear that the next contact should come from him.

Jennifer's exasperation at my failure to acquiesce was understandable, but her darkening mood and increasing edginess couldn't be entirely accounted for by that. I assumed she was coming under pressure from Jelly to address a noticeable stutter in Blair's previously impressive momentum. In his briefing, he had referred to some ‘softness' in Blair's performance; on the job, my impression was that the situation was worse than soft. My own workload had certainly increased, but that was solely due to staff cuts in the scoring section: people who left were not being replaced. Anyone could see the overall pace had slowed. For Selena and her colleagues, this was a blessing: the pressure to lift their ‘throughput' had eased. Some days, she said, she was not even testing the standard four applicants.

An edgy, unhappy Jennifer meant an edgy, unhappy organisation. The signs of sagging morale were beginning to appear, even at the swinging front desk, and I assumed that the economic downturn was hitting Blair hard enough to be ringing alarm bells in Jelly's head.

But still I resisted devoting any time to planning the crazy band-aid tutorials Jennifer was demanding. I had learnt from Selena that similar patch-ups were being ordered in other parts of the organisation in a misguided attempt to buff a flawed product that was finally losing its lustre in the market.

In spite of those tensions, though, I found I was becoming increasingly attached to Blair – or, at least, to the Blair I thought the place could become. I had come to understand that the fuel that powers the recruitment engine is hope. Properly harnessed, that should have given companies like Blair an inherently upbeat ethos. It might have been the same in the cosmetics industry, or sports coaching or even new car sales, for all I knew – to say nothing of the tertiary education sector. There's something energising about dealing with people whose eye is on a better future where they intend to make something more of themselves. (That always struck me as the magic ingredient churchgoers brought to the experience, too – a spark the institution managed to extinguish in my own case.) Even the rather subdued atmosphere at Blair couldn't conceal the fact that we were in the business of helping people make their dreams come true.

My new-found fascination with the recruitment business was not to denigrate my previous work as a clinical psychologist – far from it. The therapy business is also driven by hope. Some of my clients had come to their sessions in a spirit of quite explicit optimism, and we had worked together on building that into something solid. Most had more tentative, modest expectations. Some were hoping to catch a whiff of encouragement that might help them break a habit of despair. But some of them asked nothing more of me than confirmation that they were not merely imagining it – life really had dealt them a tough hand – and they needed patient support in their quest for a ray of hope.

Outcomes were unreliable and unpredictable – and I didn't always learn what those outcomes might be, since a patient's disappearance from my radar could mean almost anything, though I always hoped for the best. One of the reasons I had needed relief from clinical work was that my own life had come to feel burdened by the weariness, the bewilderment, the defeats and disappointments of my clients. Perhaps if my marriage had been of the sustaining, uplifting kind, I might have coped better. But Clare, towards the end, had been as demanding, as draining, as any of the people who sought my professional help.

I planned to stay in London on Thursday night and take the train to Cheltenham on Good Friday. It was arranged that Amanda's husband would meet me there and drive me to Winchcombe, no doubt in bad grace. It seemed a dreary prospect, though I knew Amanda herself would welcome me warmly, and their two daughters would be as delightful as ever.

I comforted myself with the thought that before any of that happened, Sarah and I would at least have the Monday and Tuesday nights of Easter week to ourselves before we went our separate ways. I had thought we should plan to do something gentle. It was not shaping up to be a week for anything wild and reckless, even for my wild and reckless Sarah.

That Sunday night, both exhausted, we crawled into bed and cradled each other to sleep. In the early hours of the morning, I awoke to a faint whisper: ‘I'm sorry, Tom. This is tough for you. I know it is. Please be patient. Please know that
I praise the tender flower that on a mournful day bloomed in my garden bower
. . . please
. . .'

19

M
rs Delacour welcomed the idea of me as her substitute lunch companion, but was dismissive of my suggestion that I might collect her and take her by cab to the Royal Academy, as Sarah habitually did.

‘That's Sarah's idea of a nice little ritual. She's ritual-obsessed, my daughter – always has been. Goes back to her childhood insecurities, I have no doubt. That's your area. Anyway, I have a better idea. Just come here to Roslyn Gardens and we'll have a quiet lunch together in the dining room. You can walk me around the block afterwards if you're up to it.'

Roslyn Gardens, located in a tranquil cul-de-sac in Belgravia, turned out to be cloaked in genteel ambiguity. There was nothing as vulgar as an explanatory sign at the front. It looked like a rather grand apartment building with only the most discreet modifications to provide for the care of its elderly residents. No one would have dared breathe a phrase like ‘assisted living', though there was a vague note of ammonia in the atmosphere as I entered the vestibule.

I was ushered by a receptionist into a large and beautifully appointed dining room, strongly reminiscent of the style of Sarah's apartment. Elizabeth Delacour was already seated in her wheelchair at a table tucked into an alcove beside a pair of French doors. Outside was a paved courtyard surrounded by a heavily planted garden, resplendent in its early spring colours.

‘I hope you're hungry, young Tom. I like a man with a hearty appetite.'

At forty-three, it had been a while since I had been ‘young Tom' to anyone. It's all relative, of course – according to Sarah, her mother was in her late-seventies, though she looked even older and, in spite of her earlier denials, appeared quite dependent on her wheelchair.

We ordered our food, and she ordered a bottle of wine to go with the meal.

‘We're letting our hair down today. Is that all right with you?'

‘Of course,' I said, my previous reluctance to take Sarah's place in this little ritual having evaporated. Now it had come to the point, I was glad beyond words to have Sarah's mother to myself for a while.

Elizabeth asked me about my work, my travel plans, and about the likely length of my stay. She wanted more background on my family than Sarah had ever sought. She seemed impressed that my father had cared for me after my mother died and nodded with approval at the news that he had worked as the manager of our local council library.

‘My own father worked for the council in the days when the peak of his ambition was to be appointed town clerk. He never quite made it, sadly, and my mother never quite forgave him. We have humble origins, you and I, Tom.'

‘Comfortable middle-class, I'd say. Perhaps lower-middle rather than humble. Secure, anyway. And I did inherit my father's house, which gave me a huge boost.'

‘I could certainly never have dreamed of this,' Elizabeth said, waving one arm expansively at the dining room, now filling with white heads, mostly female.

‘It's lovely,' I responded, sensing more was about to be said on this subject.

‘Oh, it's quite absurd, really. Corrupt, according to Sarah. This is all made possible by the remarkable generosity of Perry. Or the Whitman Corporation, to be more precise. I'm sure you appreciate that I use the word “generosity” with heavy irony. That man has been bad news in all the important ways, so we compensate ourselves, Sarah and I, with material comforts like this.' Elizabeth fixed me with a gaze as steady as any her daughter could produce. ‘You know all about Perry, I take it.'

‘Indeed.'

‘You realise he made a whore out of my dear daughter.'

I think my jaw actually dropped. ‘Isn't that a bit harsh?'

‘What do you call it when someone pays you for sex?'

‘More than sex, surely. Marriage, for a start. A kind of life . . .'

‘What kind of life?'

Here I was again, on the verge of defending the very thing I least wanted to defend.

‘They had a home together,' I ventured. ‘On weekends, at least. I understand she sometimes entertained Whitman clients.'

‘He paid her very handsomely for sex. Everything that happened in Littleton, everything that happens right here in London courtesy of the Whitman largesse, is about money for sex. Oh, he glamorised it. Dressed it up. Gave her more than the average high-priced call girl could even dream of. The man is a monster, Tom. I mean that. A monster.'

‘I've heard a kinder defence of him than that from Sarah.'

‘Of course you have. She was the victim. She moulded herself – her values – to accommodate what was going on.'

‘I don't like to imagine those years. But Sarah herself says – and I'm sure she's right – that there are plenty of women who put up with far worse deals than that one. She loved Perry, at least in the beginning. She hated what he was doing – the other women he saw, I mean – but she started out by loving him. They had a good time together for some years, according to Sarah.'

‘Did you ever see them having a good time together?'

‘Of course not. You know I couldn't have.'

‘Neither did I, and I went there often enough in the early stages. It was appalling. Disgraceful. It was an act, almost from the start. At least on his part. I saw my own daughter being exploited, manipulated, abused. Shall I go on?'

‘I'm not sure I really grasp – I'm not sure I understand why you're so utterly negative about it.'

‘Really?'

I looked at Elizabeth carefully. Her face was flushed.

‘Can you really not understand?' she asked me.

‘I'm sorry. Am I missing something? I mean – I know it was an awful marriage from your point of view – you were expecting so much more for your daughter. But Sarah is quite clear about the trade-off. She adapted. It suited her, at some level, in the end. She loves the house. She's used the money in constructive ways. She acknowledges she couldn't have looked after you like this without it.'

‘Perhaps Sarah never told you the full story. My daughter, reduced to the level of something between a call girl and a show pony.'

‘A show pony?'

‘Oh, yes. The glamorous hostess. Didn't she tell you? Most weekends Perry would turn up at that house with one of his clients and some girl, or girls, laid on by Perry. Sarah was expected to be the sophisticated corporate wife who gave them hospitality, entertained them at dinner and so on, and turned a blind eye.'

‘Are you sure that's how it was? Perry organised the girls?'

‘Positive. He turned that place into a love nest for some of his sleazier clients. Girls supplied. And my daughter in the thick of it.'

‘Are you saying Sarah was complicit?'

‘She didn't run away, did she? She didn't repudiate the arrangement, did she? It was all so reckless, so mad. It probably even appealed to that wild side of her.'

The waiter arrived with our lunch, and Elizabeth broke off the conversation to indulge herself fully in the ritual of tasting the wine. I looked around the room. It wasn't the Ritz, but it was furnished with impeccable taste. Nevertheless, the atmosphere of a highly refined retirement-cum-nursing home was unmistakable.

When the waiter left us, I said: ‘Sarah mentioned entertaining clients, but nothing like this.'

‘Why would she? There's a lot about the Perry Whitman saga she despises, and she's not proud of having played a role in it. I'm her mother, Tom. I watched this happening to my only daughter. I saw her being manoeuvred into this appalling situation. You say she was in love with Perry. Perhaps she was at the very start. I'd say she mainly did it for the money. She certainly stayed for the money. And the real estate. Why else do you think she's down there every week? She's told you about the clause in her contract, I assume?'

‘Contract?'

‘Perhaps I've gone too far,' Elizabeth said, no doubt in response to the look of bewilderment on my face.

‘I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but you can't stop now.'

She paused and looked through the window at the garden for what seemed like a very long time. Our food was going cold.

‘Her contract with the Whitman Corporation specified that her allowance would only continue as long as she and Perry were cohabiting. What was that if it was not money for sex, I ask you?'

My mind froze. My heart thudded in my chest. Even in that moment of shock, I seized on the idea that ‘cohabitation' could mean all kinds of things, not necessarily, or not only, that two people were living together as a couple. And I noted that Elizabeth had herself carefully used the past tense. There was simply no room in my dizzy head for the idea that Sarah had maintained any lingering sexual contact with Perry.

Though I felt numb, my mind raced to an unavoidable conclusion. I had to face the unpalatable fact that the reason Sarah had given me for her regular visits to Littleton was quite different from this one. And, in that instant, I knew this was the real reason. I was also being forced to question whether her attachment to the house itself had ever been as visceral as she had made out. If Elizabeth's information was correct, it had never been a matter of Sarah demonstrating her possession of the house; there was far more at stake. It had been a matter of turning up regularly enough to demonstrate to whatever witnesses were available that there was continuing cohabitation, however that might be defined.

An even less welcome thought invaded my mind: following the onset of his MND, had Perry moved permanently into the house not to irritate or dominate Sarah, but to ensure her continuing allowance from the company? Was it, perhaps . . . (I could scarcely bear to think it) . . . an act of kindness? Even a loving act?

As I poured the wine and picked up my knife and fork, I saw that my hands were trembling. Why hadn't Sarah told me this in the first place? Why present herself as ‘callously' clinging to possession of the house? I knew why, of course: to say she went there every weekend to ensure the continuing flow of money by proving cohabitation would have removed all doubt about her motivation for remaining married to Perry; for preparing his lunch; for reading to him; for . . . what else? All those assertions about feeling she needed to
be
there . . . they were true, but for reasons that ran far, far deeper than those Sarah had presented to me.

I had become lost in my thoughts. These were unwelcome pieces of a jigsaw I had been struggling for some time to assemble in my head. I scarcely heard what Elizabeth was saying to me, until a particular phrase caught my ear.

‘You're in love with her, of course. I know that. But that was another era, Tom. A different Sarah.'

‘A different Sarah?' How badly I wanted to believe that. I had never been persuaded by the argument that Sarah's ownership of the Littleton house would be under any threat if she failed to turn up for an extended period. If she owned it, it was indisputably hers, so I had often wondered why she thought I would fall for that argument. It had always seemed as if she were creating an excuse to account for the regularity of her visits. Now I knew why.

I had also been less than convinced by the idea that Perry would have set Sarah up in such style merely for his weekend sojourns in Littleton. When I tried to make sense of it all, I had assumed that his plan from the start had been to establish a lavish hideaway for clients who wanted somewhere discreet for their dalliances – ‘a weekend with Perry to discuss business' the perfect alibi, and Sarah the perfect English wife to provide the final touch of legitimacy. She could even answer the phone if Tom, Dick or Harry's wife called, and say ‘yes, he's here' without missing a beat. There would have been no reason to say who else was there.

Now the situation seemed both clearer and more appalling. Elizabeth had said Perry was a monster, and I wanted to believe that with all the fervour my heart could muster. Frankly, I was past caring about Sarah's role in Perry's corporate shenanigans, yet that seemed to be Elizabeth's main concern. For me, the meaning of ‘cohabitation' had become the only issue.
Cohabitation?
What if Sarah was her own kind of monster?

I decided, as coolly as I could, to go with Elizabeth on this; to focus only on Perry's moral contagion; to offer no reaction to the news of the cohabitation contract – not to spare Elizabeth's feelings, but to spare myself the pain of any further discussion of its consequences.

‘So there were multiple motives behind the lavish house in the country,' I said, feigning an outrage to match Elizabeth's.

‘Multiple? I think there was only ever one, right up until the time Perry's little project wound down.'

‘Wound down? Did he take his clients somewhere else?'

‘Oh, I believe he lost influence in the company. He became rather too degenerate even for the family firm. When his health started to fail, Sarah adopted the role of a sort of faded former mistress. Perhaps even a faded former madam, or worse, if I'm to be brutally frank. She continued to take the money, of course. For me, as much as for herself – I know that's true and I'm both grateful and appalled. The salary of a university lecturer is a pittance compared with the riches Sarah has become accustomed to having at her disposal. She's wedded to that house, you know. She knows that's morally dubious in itself, but there it is. Lots of women do no better.'

‘So Sarah tells me.'

‘And now you must make me a promise.'

‘Must I?'

‘You must never say a word of any of this to Sarah. She would not be well pleased if she thought I'd told you this part of the story. Let her tell you herself if she chooses to.'

‘I think I'd rather you had never told me. I don't like secrets. Sarah doesn't like secrets.'

‘I told you for one reason only. No, two reasons. Mainly, I wanted you to know the depths that man sank to. I wanted you to know why Sarah despises him as she does.'