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He was at home the evening that started it all. If he hadn’t been there, then perhaps – no, I won’t let myself go through all those ifs again. Not any more: that’s over. I know I can’t stop myself replaying it all like an old film, but I do surely have enough strength now to recognise that it can’t be changed.
I can still picture him that evening. Or can I? Perhaps I’m imagining it. Maybe it’s another sign of this bloody crafty subconscious of mine inventing the bits that have got lost. I could be conjuring up an image from any one of the thousands of evenings of our marriage. It wasn’t unusual for Charlie to be home first, and that day didn’t feel any different from hundreds of others before it. Why should it? Nothing signalled that it was to be the start of the end. In fact all that strikes me now about that evening was just how extraordinarily ordinary it was: the way I remember it, it was a masterpiece of uneventful domesticity hiding the horrors to come.
He was sitting reading the paper in the sitting room. And, no, it’s not my imagination: I can see it clearly. He was in the large green armchair on the far side of the fire and I saw his profile silhouetted against the striped wallpaper just before he noticed I was there. He’d already put on his old burgundy cardigan, and he’d loosened his tie and pulled it away from the collar of his blue shirt. (God, it’s fascinating how much I do remember: I suppose, as well as being the opening scene of the impending terrible drama, it was also the last scene of my other life.) He looked up as I came in, and put the paper down in a rustling heap on his lap.
‘Hi,’ he said, then, after a pause, ‘What?’
‘How do you mean?’ I answered, knowing, of course, exactly what he meant. I was quite aware of the hint of weary resignation that I’d allowed to settle onto my features as he greeted me. Although I’ve no idea now which school I’d been inspecting, I do remember I’d had a particularly frustrating and tiring day, but I don’t think there was any other excuse for taking it out on him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t work just as hard as I did – more so, probably.
‘You look tired. Or something.’ Oh, how subtle is the language of the long married! How many layers of subtext lurked dangerously under the innocent words! Why didn’t you say it, Charlie? You, of all people, who were always so good with words in court; how clearly and succinctly you could have put it. ‘You look fed up and resentful. You clearly disapprove of the fact that I am happily relaxing in this chair when you have only just come in from working all day,’ might have been near the mark. But the habit of years allowed us to speak without acknowledging a fraction of what was really being said. What a waste.
‘No, just tired. You’re right. I am. Exhausted.’ And I turned and walked out of the sitting room, and the hairline crack, which might just have opened up into a discussion of how we really felt, was safely papered over – again.
I put my briefcase down at the foot of the stairs while I hung up my coat, and called out over my shoulder to him as I moved into the kitchen, ‘I haven’t shopped yet – I just couldn’t face it.’
‘Hang on – I can’t hear you. I’ll come.’
I heard him grunting as he pulled himself up out of his armchair, and felt a tiny stab of satisfaction at the fact that I’d got him to move. He stood in the kitchen doorway leaning against the frame, the newspaper still in one hand.
‘What did you say, darling?’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have moved – it’s not important. Just that we’re out of everything and I haven’t shopped yet, that’s all. I’ll go in a minute. I’m having a cup of tea first. Do you want one?’
I looked up and smiled at him as I switched on the kettle. He’d pushed his half-moon glasses up on top of his head, and looked, even more than he usually did, like an eccentric professor. Or how one should look. His eyebrows were tufts of permanent surprise, swooping up at the outer edges in a sort of wild abandon above his ridiculously bright blue eyes. (His habit of twisting and curling the brows upwards with his fingertips while he studied a brief or read the paper used to irritate me, but so many things used to irritate me then.) The arms of his glasses had pushed some of his still thick, greying hair into ruffled wings on either side of his face, and I noticed his cardigan was wrongly buttoned. I smiled at him again, feeling a familiar echo of what I took at the time to be sentimental fondness. Now I know it for what it really was – love, of course.
‘Darling, come over here,’ I said. ‘You’re done up all wrong. Here, let me do it. Honestly, you’re worse than a child.’
I remember I reached a hand up to his face and stroked his hair, trying in vain to smooth it back tidily behind his ears. It was a habit I had, and my fingers miss the feel of it as much as my ears miss the sound of his voice, and my body misses touching his in our large double bed. Such an attractive, confident man he was then – or so I thought. And as for me – so much I took for granted: all of it, at the time.
‘The whole point of half-glasses,’ I went on smugly, ‘is that you don’t have to take them off or shove them on top of your head when you’re not using them. You’re meant to peer over them. You look like a startled koala when you push them up like that, you silly old thing.’
‘Nonsense.’ Charlie laughed. Yes, he did; he laughed, I’m sure of it. He used to laugh a lot, and it was often at something I’d said; I can’t have made that up, can I? And that’s the most important part of a successful relationship, they’re always telling us. A sense of humour. The couple that laughs together stays together. Make your man laugh. Well, yes. But not enough, apparently, in my case.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I can’t bear peering over them at the world. It makes me feel like I’m playing the old fogey. The dull, dusty barrister.’
And I didn’t answer, did I? I just raised my eyebrows and threw him one of those knowing looks of mine that I used to think were so clever, as I finished buttoning up his cardigan and then gave him a dismissive pat on the belly. A subtle reminder in a look and a gesture that he was older, fatter and greyer than I was, and that his career was, indeed, a little dusty. At the same time, it was quick reassurance for me of my own relatively good shape and tactfully tinted hair. Oh yes, it was – don’t deny it. At least I can be honest with myself now, one of the few comforts I have left.
Charlie sighed and went to walk out of the kitchen, then stopped and turned in the doorway, pulling the glasses back onto his nose and looking at me over the top of them. ‘And I know I could indeed be considered an old has-been but I’m not quite ready to agree to it. Not just yet.’ And, although he was joking, the acknowledgement of my casual put-down wasn’t lost on me.
‘Of course not, darling,’ I said. ‘You’re in your prime. As is your wife.’ I walked over to the fridge and put a hand on one hip as I opened it and scanned the contents. ‘Not too exciting, is it? I’ll go in a minute.’
‘Hmm?’
‘I’ll go in a minute,’ I repeated. ‘Shopping.’
‘Oh, haven’t you been?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Charlie: no, I haven’t been. I said. I told you when I first came in – I do wish you’d listen, it’d make life so much simpler if I didn’t have to repeat myself all the time.’
‘Sorry, I expect I was thinking about something else.’
There
