Infidelity (23 page)

30

A
s she left the apartment for the First Wednesdays' May dinner, Sarah mentioned she would be asking Fox for an alternative to Bethany.

‘Couldn't you do that on the phone?' I asked. ‘There won't be much of an opportunity for a private chat with Fox tonight.'

‘Private? Why private?'

‘Well, aren't we supposed to be keeping this quiet?'

‘Not from the First Wednesdays, Tom. They already know.'

‘They
know?
How come?'

‘How do you think? Fox was the one who told me, after all, and Fox told E, of course. Why wouldn't she? And I told Jelly myself.'

‘
Jelly
knows?'

‘Of course.'

‘He hasn't said a word to me about it.'

‘He wouldn't. Soul of discretion, that's Jelly.'

‘So when I saw him last week, he knew. And he knew that I knew, but I didn't know that he knew.'

‘Too complicated. Everyone knows. That's how we are – tell one, tell all. The boys are intrigued that Fox and I are going through this together. Two equally ancient first-time mothers who both thought we were past our use-by dates. The boys think it's a hoot. They're thrilled for us, by the way. You and me, I mean. They love you. I've told you that. They love the fact that you're in my life.
Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come.
'

‘Who wrote that?'

‘Oh, you didn't think it was original? Robert Bridges, actually. E's working on a setting. Of course they all know. They know everything.'

‘This is like a secret society.'

‘Pretty much like that, yes. Except there's nothing sinister about it. Don't you remember me explaining this to you in the very beginning?'

‘What if Fox has invited a guest?'

‘She hasn't. There's too much to discuss. We didn't want an outsider in our midst.'

‘When does all this communicating go on? You refuse to have a computer at home – are you emailing each other at work? Not the dreaded text, surely?'

‘Emailing? Never! Our conversations are actual conversations. We ring each other up, or we meet. Fox often drops in at work, or we have lunch. We don't email socially and we don't text. You know that.'

I spent the whole time Sarah was gone lying on the bed in the guest room, hands clasped behind my head, fighting the idea that four people were sitting around a dinner table discussing the fate of my baby, but not with me.

When I heard Sarah's key in the lock, I stayed right where I was. That was the first time I had not bounded to the door to greet her.

She came and found me in the guest room.

‘Oh, Tom,' she said, ‘you look like a condemned man. Come into our bed and let me bring you some tea.'

‘May I have the headlines?'

‘When you're undressed and in bed.'

I did as I was bidden, already ashamed of my surliness. She was pregnant; I was the undisputed father. No one could take that away from us. Whatever anyone else might have thought or said, we ourselves would be the only ones to decide what would happen next.

She entered the bedroom bearing a tray with our teacups on it, set the tray on her bedside table, came around to my side of the bed and knelt beside me.

‘I've never wanted you as much as I want you this moment,' she said, and I had no reason to doubt it. She was glowing with desire.

She undressed slowly, maximising my pleasure, parading her nakedness. I looked to see if there might already be a sign of our child. Of course there wasn't. Sarah stood before me like a goddess sculpted in alabaster, the curve of her abdomen as gentle as ever. I never understood how someone who refused to go near a gym and ate whatever she liked remained as statuesque as she did.

We drank our tea and lay beside each other.

‘So, how was it?' I asked.

‘Lovely. Do you know, E has written a most exquisite arrangement of “Monday's Child”, just for us. He said he would dedicate it to our – you know – when it arrives. We'll sing it for you next time the dinner is here.'

‘I wonder what day the tenth of December is.'

‘Fox looked it up. It's a Friday.
Friday's child is loving and giving
.'

‘Beautiful.'

‘You don't
sound
as if you think it's beautiful at all.'

‘Well, no. Sorry. I don't mean to sound ungracious, but I've been stuck here alone, imagining them discussing your uncertainties with you but not with me. Weighing up the situation. Talking about Perry. Even about the future of this baby,' I said with defiant emphasis on the word ‘baby'.

‘And they did. Of course they did. Wouldn't you expect them to? Terribly close friends for more than twenty years?'

I struggled to hold back my resentment at feeling not only like an outsider, or even an interloper, but also like an object of analysis.

‘So did they offer you any advice?'

‘Most certainly not. That's not how we operate. Plenty of robust debate, of course. Everyone having their say. But no advice. Never. They know it's entirely up to you and me. It's not their foetus.'

‘When you say “it's up to you and me”, I take it you're referring to the question of whether we would ever terminate this pregnancy. I assume that got an airing?'

‘Yes, it did. In fact, we went through the same thing when Fox fell pregnant. At first, she wasn't at all sure she wanted a baby, given her circumstances – and they're far less complicated than ours.'

‘You mean there was no third party.'

Sarah looked intently at me, eyebrows raised. The unspoken message was clear: Fox was not carrying her husband's baby either.

‘E is the father,' I said. It made sense.

‘Fox assumes her husband knows. Well, of course he knows. He's away so much and he was certainly away for weeks on end around the time when the conception would have occurred. He doesn't seem that interested, according to Fox. He certainly doesn't treat her as if she's carrying his child. Anyway, his life is in Basel and Fox has never quite known how she was supposed to fit into that. He's never invited her to go and live with him in Switzerland, for instance. Not that she would – her life is here.'

‘Go back a bit. In what way are our circumstances more complicated than that? That sounds complex enough to me.'

‘Oh, Tom. Can't you see? Mr Fox is healthy and strong and self-possessed. He's perfectly capable of coming to terms with the baby not being his. He has already made it clear to Fox that he has another life. Frankly, I don't know why they've stayed together this long, if “together” is the right word. I imagine the birth will be the final straw. Mr Fox won't want to be known as the father of someone else's child.' Sarah paused and reflected. ‘What could be more different from our case? Perry is terminally ill and terribly frail. I can't easily tell him what's happening now – not at this late stage. And I do owe him something.'

A sudden fury rose within me and I snapped at her: ‘Owe him something? After the way he treated you all those years? You mean you owe him for the house, for the river of gold, for . . . for what?'

‘Yes, for the house. For supporting me. For giving me a wonderful time when I was young and foolish enough to marry him.'

I turned on her, shouting, fully conscious that I was behaving absurdly, but powerless to control myself. ‘A wonderful time? What do you mean – in
bed
? What other wonderful time did he give you? Is this some form of torture you've invented, telling me this when our baby is . . .'

I flung myself back on the pillow like a petulant child and pushed Sarah's hand away when she tried to touch me.

‘Go on,' I said after a long silence, ‘tell me about this robust debate. What did everyone think about our little dilemma?'

‘Well, for a start, no one thought it was little.'

‘Quite. I'm sorry. Please go on.'

‘Are you sure you want to know?'

‘I do.'

Something about Sarah's manner – a restored confidence in her tone, perhaps – alarmed me. I sensed some new distance between us, as if she might have gone to a place in her mind where she felt free to ponder all this, free of any entanglement with my emotions. She got out of bed and collected a couple of silk cushions from the sofa in her bay window, propped herself up and began talking to the ceiling rather than to me.

‘Jelly was implacably opposed to abortion on any grounds, so he thought the challenge was simply to manage the problem of Perry, either by concealing the pregnancy from him, or coming straight out and telling him the whole story. If he were in Perry's shoes, Jelly thought, he wouldn't be unduly disturbed, and might even be pleased for me. In Jelly's view, Perry must be fully aware of how vilely he treated me over the long haul. He must know I hadn't felt like his wife because he hadn't behaved like a husband. So what grounds would he have for complaint?'

If only the world worked like that, I restrained myself from saying.

‘Jelly's a supreme optimist,' I said. ‘What did the others make of that rather hopeful point of view?'

‘At first, E thought Jelly was being far too pragmatic, far too rational. He assumed Perry would be furious to the very limit of his diminished capacity for fury, and would probably use this as an excuse to shift his burden of guilt to me. By the way, I'm by no means convinced Perry carries any such burden of guilt, but that's what E thought, at least initially – Perry's pent-up shame would come out as wild and bitter acrimony. E thought Perry would look for some way to lash out. Unreasonable, he conceded that, but very human. He thought life could become very unpleasant for me – for us – unless I was prepared to keep Perry in the dark, which he realised might become more difficult as time went by. Otherwise, he thought I might as well tell him the whole story and then withdraw totally – not go to the house – just shift my whole life to London and let the Whitman enterprise do its worst. What did I have to lose apart from real estate and cash? Did that really matter so much to me, he wanted to know, compared with my future with you and a child?'

As Sarah was saying all this, I couldn't quite banish the unworthy thought that the real estate and cash loomed very large indeed, had always loomed very large, and might conceivably outweigh all other considerations.

‘What did you say to that?' I asked.

‘I said very little at that point. The conversation was swirling around and, within minutes, E had changed his position entirely. Rather characteristic of E, these wild swings. Ask Fox. Anyway, he became quite pontifical. Much less sympathetic. More the typical E, really – quite detached from the emotional realities. On reflection, he said, he'd come to the conclusion that we had created this mess – his word – and he thought I was being terribly selfish about it all, talking about it as if it was just about us – you and me – and how we couldn't just ignore the problem of Perry. Strangely judgemental for someone in his personal situation, I'd have thought. But that's our E. He got quite worked up in the end. It's not just about the two of you, or even the three of you, he said – meaning you, me and Perry. He maintained there are four people involved and one of them hasn't got a voice in this. Who's going to speak for the baby? he kept asking.'

Who indeed? I thought. Who indeed? I, the child's chief advocate, had been absent from these deliberations. The flaky E could hardly have been expected to argue the case for my baby with my passion, my intensity, my conviction, though he was himself a father-to-be and must have shared some of my feelings, including the anxiety about how to deal with the shadowy presence of a husband in the life of the baby's mother. Sarah might say the two cases had little in common, but I could see some remarkable parallels. In fact, I found the coincidence quite unnerving.

‘Honestly, Tom, it was something of an intellectual exercise for the two boys. But not for Fox. Fox was the passionate one. She let the boys have it with both barrels on the subject of a woman's rights over her own body. She told them far more than they wanted to hear about the development of a foetus. Attacked E mercilessly over his constant use of the term “baby”. Sar is
expecting
a baby, Fox said, several times – she hasn't yet
got
a baby. A scarcely beating heart, no cognitive function – what kind of baby is that? Yes, she said, it may
become
a baby, if nature so decrees, but it isn't one yet. Saying it's a baby now is like saying an acorn is an oak tree.'

‘And did anyone take her up on the obvious question about when
is
the time to start thinking about a foetus as a baby? Not when it's born, I assume.'

‘Oh, E and Jelly had a highly uninformed debate about that but Fox basically told them to shut up and stick to topics they knew something about. She said there was simply nothing to debate until at least twelve weeks. After that, yes, a bit more controversial. I must say Fox was also the only one to come out and say what the boys must have been thinking.'