Unfaithfully Yours (16 page)

By the way, I did enjoy your last novel. Or was it the one before last? I can never keep up with you. I enjoyed bits of it, anyway. It reminded me of the less interesting bits of Margaret Drabble, although her novels are rather made up of bits that are less than interesting, aren’t they? Yours started a bit slowly, got a bit lost in the middle and didn’t really deliver a satisfactory conclusion but it was about something, wasn’t it? Even if I couldn’t quite work out what the something was. There is no earthly reason, by the way, that middle-class people in Putney should be any less interesting than working-class people in Leeds or Chinese migrant workers in Hong Kong – even if that stupid man on the radio seemed to think that there was something intrinsically dull about the Makepeace family. Was it called
The Castaway
? Or was that the one before last?

And, no, I will never finish the work on Propertius. About the only thing I have in common with A. E. Housman is that both of us become incurably dull when engaged in classical scholarship. Let us meet up soon and we can bitch to each other’s faces rather behind each other’s backs or to the blank page, something both of us, I suspect, face far too often these days.

All my best

Elizabeth Price

From:

Samuel Dimmock

Dimmock Dentistry

‘Because Teeth Matter’

24 Beeston Crescent

Putney

30 October

To:

Barbara Goldsmith

101 Fellen Road,

Putney

Dear Barbara,

Well – really! I am glad I am only Sam the humble dentist and not an ‘arty’ person like you. If this is how arty people behave – well – may their teeth fall out before their time!

I received your round robin and noted that you had sent a similar one to Mary, which I took the liberty of opening. I never open her mail, unless I think it might contain something that may upset her. If I recognize the handwriting, of course, I sometimes have a peep, especially in respect of her mother who used to write quite regularly when she was alive and from time to time say some unpleasant things about me, which I really needed to know about. I also tend to open any letters she gets from abroad as a Dutch man once tried to seduce her at a dental conference and still bothers her with his problems.

I have not shown your letter to her as I think it would upset her. I have hidden it in my desk drawer – where I keep my private collection of photographs and illustrations. I also put in there any other things that I think will cause distress to my dear Mary. It is, as you can imagine, quite full! I cut anything out of the newspapers that I think she should not see. Some things, like 9/11 for example, are gloated over by the media so extensively that it is impossible to avoid them. But I certainly try to keep from her anything unpleasant that has happened in the Putney area. And that keeps me quite busy enough! I have, for example, removed all the photographs of Elaine’s second boyfriend from the family album and kept them in there. Chris was a very disturbed boy indeed. I liked him a lot, actually, and offered to take him sailing on several occasions; but although he was a fit young lad with a good physique, I could not interest him in a life on the ocean wave. He was not a good partner for Elaine. Cutting up her underclothes was not, as he seemed to think it was, a way of getting her to love him!

May I say this, Barbara? Mary and I have a good marriage. It is based on mutual respect. Mary has her painting and her writing and her dance and, of course, her acting. I am sure, as a published author, you found much to criticize in the production of
Hamlet
. It is a very long play and not always easy to understand, but I have to say I thought Mary was superb. Seeing her naked was a little shocking. It is not a sight with which I am overly familiar. Marriage is about a lot more than nudity. But I thought it was obviously necessary for the production in order to show the desperation of the characters and their need to display their love in public. Not a thing I approve of – but, then, these people are theatrical types.

You were cruel about it, Barbara. It is never necessary to be cruel. Sometimes as a dentist I have to inflict pain. I do not enjoy it and wherever possible I try to avoid doing so.

While we are on that subject, I thought your remarks about myself and little Micky Larner were ill judged in the extreme. I am, as I am sure you know, a man’s man. I am not the type of chap who brings Mary red roses or hauls her off to the opera. I am the kind of guy who gets a kick out of large blokes kicking hell out of each other on the rugby field. I like to be among men, Barbara, especially at the weekend. Yes – Micky has become a pal of mine. I took him over to Cherbourg on the
Jolly Roger
the other weekend and we had a whale of a time! But to make the kind of sneering remark you did about two happily married men, especially when one of them had a wife who died in tragic circumstances ten years ago, was tasteless and unnecessary. My marriage is very important to me. Some of my happiest times have been spent sitting by the fire with Mary, holding hands and talking about our dear Elaine – who is the centre of our world even if she has got mixed up with one of the Mad Mullahs.

Mary is, like Micky, my pal. In fact, when we first met, before we met any of the West Putney Highbrow Set, as I call you lot, she was very much one of the boys. She loved to watch us row and often joined us big, hearty masculine blokes as we nipped into the Duke’s Head by Putney Bridge after practice to ‘put back the sweat’, as we say. I think what I liked about her was her delicate femininity. She is like some Greek statue that I worship from afar, even if I am only in the next room. Back in the day, she came to watch the guys arm-wrestling, putting the shot, boxing and cage-fighting, which we did quite a lot of, and I was known as Mad Mick, although that is not my name. She was known, in the long ago, as ‘Flower’ among us lads.

Motherhood changed her. I have, at times, been slightly shocked by the sheer force of the femininity I seem to have aroused in her. With her floral dresses and her lovely lilting laugh and her wonderfully prominent bosoms, she is all woman. There is now no trace of the delicate creature I remember watching me as I chucked up in the alley next to the Spotted Cow after six pints of Young’s Extra Strong Lager. You never knew her, Barbara. I did, and she still has a special place in my heart. Yes, I do miss the Judy Garland grace of her as us boys lounged around lighting our own farts, smoking small cigars and trying to throw knives blindfolded. But people change, for God’s sake. It sounds as if you have not. You are bitter, Barbara. All those years ago I know you looked down on me, the humble dentist, while you were up there with Jeffrey Archer and Antonia Drabble and that bloke who writes about the Lake District and used to be on the television.

Love is not a free ticket, Barbara. Love is the light that draws us on through the immense tunnel that leads from the cradle to the grave. Love is tough, and we have to be tough to reap its rewards. You have given up on things and that is not good. You have given up on your husband, John, who is a marvellous bloke and a first-class doctor. Most sadly of all, you have given up on those boys of yours. They are wonderful young men, Babs. I have not seen them for nigh on twenty years but I know, from your description of them, jaded as it is, that they are the kind of blokes I would be glad to count as friends. How I long to play a game of footie with them out on a muddy field and then, in the light of a winter afternoon, with thighs and shoulders aching from the contact, hearts lifted in victory or lowered in defeat, to walk, as pals, arm in arm, to the pavvy and to joke with each other in the steam of the showers, as we towel down, totally and naturally naked by the grey lockers and wooden benches that stand, like sentinels, on guard over the joyous, sacred, intimate moments of a man’s life. No, Barbara, don’t sneer because sneering does not become you! Learn to trust. Learn to give. Learn a bit of humility, damn it!

And do not give up on Jas and Josh. They need your love. They need John’s love. They need my love, for God’s sake. Do say to them that if they ever fancy going out on the water, the
Jolly Roger
is at their disposal!

Harsh words I know – but this needed saying.

Sam Dimmock

From:

Mary ‘Only the Wife Not on the Notepaper’ Dimmock

But still care of

Samuel Dimmock

Dimmock Dentistry

‘Because Teeth Matter’

24 Beeston Crescent

Putney

30 October

To:

Barbara Goldsmith

101 Fellen Road,

Putney

Dear Barbara and John,

I am writing to you both, although Barbara wrote her ‘letter’ to me and to Sam separately. I don’t believe in trying to split off married couples, which is clearly what Barbara is trying to do. It gave me especial pleasure to write DR and MRS JOHN GOLDSMITH, which was what we always used to write in the old days when letters were addressed correctly and people could spell and didn’t use the Internet all the time and Google, which tells you everything, though you never remember it afterwards, like Chinese food making you hungry an hour after you have eaten it.

You are a ‘married couple’, whether you like it or not, Barbara. You are a team.

The whole point of marriage is that you know everything about the other person even the things they do not want you to know. Sam took the letter addressed to me by Barbara and hid it in a special drawer where he keeps things he thinks I shouldn’t know about, including a magazine of his called
Men in Thongs
, which, as you might guess, is a magazine with a lot of pictures of men in thongs in it.

It may be that Sam is a homosexual. I have often thought so over the years. But I just cannot see it somehow. If being interested in naked men makes you a homosexual, then what of Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo? I am pretty sure one of them was interested in naked men. Whichever one it was did that statue in St Peter’s, didn’t he? That was pretty naked. For God’s sake! I like looking at pictures of naked men and I am not a homosexual. Sam is just a guy who likes extreme sport and he keeps plenty of things in that drawer apart from pictures of naked men. There are a lot of pictures of boys on cross-country runs, for example, all of whom are fully clothed, also – is this a sign that he is ‘gay’? – many of the rejection letters sent to me, which he has very sweetly intercepted. For the last few years I have been writing a book about a frog that accidentally gets on the Eurostar to Brussels. It is a comedy.

I have occasionally sent out selected chapters to publishers who, I think, might have the courage to get behind it. It is at least 100,000 words long and still growing! I must say I had been puzzled as to why I had not received any response to the many letters I had sent out, but when I saw the answers that dear, dear Sam had hidden from me, I was very glad I had been kept in the dark. ‘Predictable’, ‘coy’, ‘badly written’, and many other hurtful things. One letter simply read, ‘Dear Mrs Dimmock, We do not want any more books about frogs.’ And that was it! Is that literary criticism? I don’t think so.

Sam keeps many hurtful things from me. I didn’t find out about the tragic events at the World Trade Center until three o’clock on the following afternoon, and I did not realize Diana, Princess of Wales, was dead for three days! Mind you, I think he was helped there by the fact that I went in for an appendectomy almost at the very moment her car collided with that underpass wall in Paris.

He wants me to be happy, Babs. To be the happy, happy girl who ran and played with you and the children in those villas in France, Spain, Italy and Brittany, which is in France although it isn’t quite the same, is it? Do you remember how Elaine and Conrad painted Jas and Josh green? Wasn’t it fun? And now they are management consultants and GPs (yes, Elaine is a highly successful GP!!!) and high-powered sales people.

And yet – and this is what I think you are saying in your often very hurtful and cruel letter – things are not really as they should be. There is a lot of pain and misery behind the net curtains. I know nobody has net curtains any more but people still write as if they do, don’t they? You are clearly not a happy woman and I, though I love and respect my husband more than you obviously do John – I cannot understand how you can so underestimate a man who is so widely regarded, locally, as a saint – I am, also, still not contented and fulfilled. I do not seem to find my child as offensive as you clearly find your two boys but I do wish Elaine would find the right man. She was involved with a not-very-nice Spanish sociologist, who stole some of her furniture and then wrote her a horrible letter about it. I could not find it in my heart to weep for him when he was electrocuted on holiday in the Costa Brava. Mercifully Elaine was not with him at the time. She is now with a very nice (Pakistani) man called Hanif but I feel things between them are not as they should be.

And Sam and I, Babs, have come to the end of the road.

As you were so frank with me I will be equally frank with you. I have had an affair with Gerald Price. I expect you will be a bit surprised by that. I think you always rather liked the look of him yourself – but it was me he chose, Barbara, even though I have not published eight (or is it nine?) ‘highly praised’ novels. I found them all unreadable, actually. They have none of the narrative sweep of Margaret Drabble or Melvyn Bragg. He found me sexually very desirable and I felt the same about him. Gerald Price, that is – not Melvyn Bragg. However loud my laugh and however ‘fat’ (your word) my body. We had sex in the open air many, many times – which might also surprise you. Not bad for a fat woman with a loud laugh, eh? I have already told your husband and, actually, he has been very helpful about it. I have also told Sam – as the affair has now ended and we are remaking our lives. Things are changing. Sam wants to be alone. I, too, need to be alone. Although I am not fully alone . . . Intrigued, Barbara?

But I do not write in order to be bitchy and gloat about my sexual success with a man you clearly fancied. I will leave that to you. I write to let you know that, ironically, I rather agree with the conclusions of your letter. It is time for a change in Putney and, unlike you, Babs, I have actually made some big, big changes in my life, fat or not.