Man and Wife (31 page)

‘No. I think you would be able to think more clearly. At the moment you’re falling in love with a fantasy, and that’s the most dangerous thing in the world.’

‘You really think you can’t care about someone until you’ve exchanged bodily fluids?’

‘Hey, don’t knock it, Harry. It breaks the ice.’

I looked at my watch. ‘You’re on in one minute.’

‘No man can think clearly until he’s been despunked, Harry.’

Maybe. I could see that a platonic relationship made everything seem hopelessly romantic. A mid-afternoon cappuccino with Kazumi in some sun-dappled little café became something I’d remember forever. A Polaroid we took of ourselves on Primrose Hill – Kazumi laughing as we banged our heads together, trying to get in shot – became the highlight of my week. She squeezed my hand in the back row of the Swiss Cottage Odeon and it was more exciting than most of the blow jobs I’d had in my brief career as a boy about town. She just did it for me.

And, yes, I could see that this thing was getting out of control. But it was more than a fantasy. I was starting to measure the practicalities of a life with Kazumi. Dismantling one home, setting up another home, giving Kazumi and me the chance to get to that point that all couples, even the ones that are crazy about each other, have to reach eventually. That point where ‘you don’t even feel the need to talk to each other.

It could work. I knew it could work. And maybe she was the one that I had needed all along. And perhaps it would make
Cyd happier if she was with someone else. She certainly didn’t seem too thrilled by her life with me right now. So maybe it would be better all round. One harsh, painful tearing asunder – of a marriage, a house, a home – and then everybody would get a chance to have their happy ending.

You don’t even
know
her,’ Eamon said, interrupting my plans for a new life. ‘You’ve spent – what? – a hundred hours around each other? If that.’

‘How long do you think it takes? How long before you know?’

He shook his head, exasperated. Outside, surprisingly close, we could hear hecklers shouting down the female comedian on stage.

‘You fucking idiot, Harry. You’re really going to leave your wife, your terrific wife, who you do not fucking deserve, for some slip of a girl you hardly know?’

He was genuinely angry with me.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Well, where do you think this thing is heading?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You better start knowing, pal. You have started it now, and sooner or later – probably sooner – it will all end in tears.’

‘Why should it end in tears?’

‘Because you have to choose, you dumb bastard. Once you get into one of these things, you always have to choose.’

‘And what if I make my choice, and I choose Kazumi? How do you know it would be a disaster? How can you be so sure?’

He held up his hands, a mocking surrender.

‘I don’t know, Harry. Neither do you. But have sex with Kazumi. Have lots of sex. Then see how you feel the first time she says something negative about your son.’

‘What if she never does? What if she’s great with him?’

‘Then pack your bags and go.’

He pressed a silver key in my hand. I stared at it. He didn’t have to tell me that it was the key to his flat.

‘Kazumi’s great,’ Eamon said. ‘But the world is full of great women. That’s what romantic fools like you never admit. There
are a million great women out there. Ten million. You could be in love with any one of them. Given the right circumstances, given timing. Sooner or later you have to stop tormenting yourself with the thought that there’s just one out there with your name on. You have to be happy with what you’ve got. You have to love the one you’re with. You have to say – this is my home now, this is my wife, and this is where I’m staying. Stop looking, Harry. Just stop looking, will you?’

From long ago, I heard the voices of my parents.
Just rest your eyes
, my mum and dad would tell me.
Just rest your eyes
.

But Eamon held out the silver key.

And I took it.

‘I started using these sensitive condoms,’ Eamon said, prowling across the tiny stage. ‘Sensitive condoms – yeah, they’re great. What they do is, after you have had sex and fallen asleep, the sensitive condom cuddles the girl and talks to her about her feelings. Sensitive condoms send flowers the next day. Never forget to call…’

A swell of laughter in the audience, mixed with a few groans. There wasn’t the easy willingness to laugh that you found in a TV audience. There was a kind of punter who came to these things for the pleasure of baiting the poor sap on stage. Out in the smoky darkness, some of them were restless.

‘Got any coke, Eamon?’

‘Ah, I don’t do that any more,’ Eamon said mildly. ‘The doctor gave me suppositories for my addiction. I told him they weren’t working. He said, “Well, have you been taking them regularly?” I said, “What do you think I’ve been doing, doc? Shoving them up my arse?”’

More laughter. And some boos.

‘Yeah, sensitive condoms. People say wearing a condom during sex is like wearing a raincoat in the shower. They’ve got to be kidding. With all these new diseases,
not
wearing a condom during sex is like wearing a live fuse box in the bath…’

Laughter and a smattering of increasingly vitriolic abuse.

‘You loser, Eamon, you has-been!’

‘Fuck off back to the detox clinic!’

‘Waiter, this fish is off!’

‘Condoms, yeah.’ The little Woody Allen cough. ‘These days you get packs of condoms for all different nationalities. You get the six-pack for Italians. That’s Monday to Saturday with a day of rest on Sunday. And you get the eight-pack for the French. That’s Monday to Saturday, and twice on Sunday. And you get the twelve-pack for the British.’ A pause. His timing was always good. ‘January, February, March…’

A belligerent voice from the back, hoarse with cigarettes and loathing.

‘Come in, Eamon Fish – your fifteen minutes is up!’

‘My parents didn’t have to worry about condoms. Buy me and stop one – no, they didn’t have to worry about any of that. Not that their sex life was very happy. One night I heard them through the bedroom wall. They were trying to have sex and it just wasn’t working. My mother said, “What’s the matter? Can’t you think of anyone either?”’

‘You’re not funny!’ the voice shouted.

‘It’s not that kind of comedy,’ Eamon said.

It was a big city but a small world. Sooner or later we were going to be seen together.

Naturally we avoided the danger zones of north and central London, that surprisingly large swathe of the city where Cyd could be working, or Gina could be lurking. But eventually we would be spotted. I knew it.

When it happened it was worse than I had imagined – and it was not my wife, or even my ex-wife, but someone from the outer suburbs of my life. He saw me as soon as he walked into the club, and took it all in.

The married man, the girl by his side who wasn’t his wife. In a quiet corner of the pub above the comedy club, having a drink, holding hands like they had done it before.

And I felt a sickening guilt that this man knew, this stranger,
and my wife didn’t. I was ashamed of myself. It seemed like the worst betrayal imaginable.

‘Harry,’ Richard said, looking at Kazumi.

What the hell was he doing here? What possible reason could this man have to be in a comedy club in Hackney?

‘Richard. I thought you were still in the States.’

‘Came over to see Gina.’ He finally took his eyes off Kazumi. ‘To be honest, I want her to come back.’

‘This is Kazumi,’ I said, for a cowardly moment thinking about passing her off as a work colleague, or a business associate.

But the truth is that Richard didn’t care. He was in a state that was beyond caring about the romantic tangles of others – no job, no wife, and a life that had reached a point that he had never imagined. I knew the feeling.

‘I’m staying with some friends,’ he said. ‘They’ve got a house around here. It’s becoming quite popular with the City people, isn’t it?’

‘Them and the crack dealers. Listen, Richard, we have to go. Good luck with…everything.’

I watched Kazumi and Richard smiling and shaking hands and I thought of Gina’s old bull theory, knowing he didn’t have a chance in hell of getting her back.

Then we left him, our drinks abruptly abandoned, my guilt herding us out of the door.

And that’s when I remembered the key in my pocket.

We let ourselves into Eamon’s flat.

It had been bought during the boom years of
Fish on Friday
, lucrative personal appearances and beer endorsements – a waterfront loft overlooking Tower Bridge, the Thames and the colonised docks, all lit up like a tourist postcard of London at night. Kazumi went to the wall-high windows and stared out at the inky-black river, the illuminated bridge, the glittering city.

Then she faced me.

‘Kazumi—’

‘No more talk.’

Lit only by the moonlight and the lights of the waterfront, we struggled to undress while kissing each other at the same time. We were half dressed and grappling on the sofa like teenagers in heat when Eamon came home.

Kazumi heard the key in the door before I did, and she was off the sofa and into the bathroom before Eamon and his companion were even in the living room.

I recognised the woman – a TV producer who had once worked as a runner on
The Marty Mann Show
. Eamon waved from the doorway, and then they disappeared into his bedroom. I heard laughter and music from behind the closed door. It shouldn’t have mattered, but the spell had been broken. Kazumi came back from the bathroom fully dressed and ready to go.

‘Ah, not yet,’ I said. ‘Please, Kazumi. Come here. Nobody’s going to disturb us again. Look at the view.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not my view.’

I didn’t try to argue with her. I wearily did up the buttons of my shirt. We quietly let ourselves out of the flat.

‘It can’t go on like this,’ she said as I flagged down a taxi. ‘I mean it, Harry. It can’t go on.’

And it didn’t.

Because after dropping Kazumi off I went home, where my wife told me that she was leaving me.

twenty-five

I had been left before, of course.

But this time was different.

When Gina left me, she went in a fury – not caring what she took and what she left behind, just wanting to be out of our home, just wanting to be away from me and our life.

I remembered a half-shut suitcase spilling Pat’s socks, betrayed tears smudging her mascara and a throbbing pain just above my heart, where she had thrown my mobile phone at me.

Despite all of that, when Gina left there still felt like the faint chance that she would one day change her mind, that she would come back home, and that the rage would eventually pass.

It wasn’t like that with Cyd.

Cyd’s leaving was calm and methodical.

No tears, no raised voices, nothing done in haste. A grown-up, rational leaving, that somehow felt even worse. She wasn’t leaving tonight. She wasn’t leaving tomorrow. But she was leaving soon.

In our little guest room my wife had suitcases and overnight bags open on the single bed, and covering what looked like every spare square inch of the parquet floor. Some of the cases were almost empty. Others were already filling up with books, toys, CDs and winter clothes belonging to both her and Peggy. By the time the season changed, Cyd planned to be somewhere else.

With Gina I had felt that I still had a chance.

With Cyd there was no doubt at all.

She was never coming back.

‘Going somewhere?’

She turned to face me. ‘Sorry. I didn’t hear you come in.’ She turned back to the suitcase she was packing, stacking a pile of Peggy’s thick woollen sweaters, shaking her head. ‘Sorry.’

‘What is this?’ I said, coming slowly into the room.

‘What does it look like?’

‘Looks like you’re moving out.’

She nodded. ‘Like I said – sorry.’

‘Why?’

She turned and faced me, and I saw the hurt and anger under the calm. ‘Because you’ve left me already. I can feel it. I don’t know why you stay, Harry. And you know the sad thing? Neither do you. You can’t work out what you are doing with me. You can’t remember.’

I shook my head, although I knew every word was true. Somewhere along the line I had forgotten why we were together, and that’s why it had been so easy to fall for someone else.

‘I can’t mess around, Harry. I told you that from the start. It’s not just me. I’ve got a daughter. I have to think about her. And I know that, with things the way they are between us, sooner or later you’re going to meet some little fuck buddy.’

‘A fucky buddy?’

‘Fuck buddy. Someone you can have uncomplicated sex with – you’ll meet her sooner or later. Maybe you already have, I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know. Come on, Harry – we don’t even sleep in the same bed any more. There’s a fuck buddy out there with your name on.’

Blended families and fuck buddies. It was a whole new world out there. My father wouldn’t have recognised it. I didn’t recognise it myself.

‘Cyd, the last thing I’m looking for is a fuck buddy.’

She studied me for a bit. And perhaps she could see that this was true too.

‘Then you’ll find somebody you love, and that will be even messier. Not messier for you. But for me and my daughter. Remember her? And that’s who I have to worry about now. You’ll meet some young woman, and you’ll do what you always
do, Harry – tell her that she is the greatest girl in the history of the world.’

‘Is that what I do?’

My wife nodded. ‘And you will believe every word of it, Harry. And so will she. Or maybe it’s happened already. Has it, Harry? Have you met the greatest girl in the history of the world? Or just the latest in a long line of them?’

I looked from Cyd to her open cases and back again. She had packed her photo albums. The ones of Peggy growing up. The one of our wedding day. The ones that recorded our holidays over the years. She had stored them all away.