The Whole Story and Other Stories (12 page)

I think we should join this, she said.

It would be something about sewing or Catholicism or being more like a girl was supposed to be. I watched the TV as if something very important was on.

For only a penny each, she said, if you send to these people, you can get four books. A penny each. There are all these books you can choose from on this page. All you have to do is buy their Book of the Month. And then what they do, after that, they send you their Book of the Month every month for a year and you don’t have to buy it if you don’t want it. They have all these things you can choose from for a penny. The Collected Works of William Shakespeare. That would be a useful book for you to have.

What? I said, because I had been fighting for nearly a year to be allowed to do English at university, not Law or Languages but something that meant I would never have a proper job. I can see myself now coming across the room, my eyes wide, my face like a child’s, or like someone whose hopelessly foreign language has suddenly been understood, and my mother pleased with herself, holding out the open page to me.

We ordered the Shakespeare collection and a dictionary and a thesaurus and a book of quotations. Four weeks later they came all together in a box through the post and with them was the hardback Book Club Book of the Month which was called Princess Anne and her Horses and was full of colour photographs of Princess Anne and horses. My mother laughed and laughed. Then she saw the price of the book.

The following month the Book of the Month was a book about royal palaces. The month after that it was about the life of an English Edwardian lady. The month after that it was about the history of fox-hunting. They came every month, about gardens and the stately homes of members of royalty, always glossy with colour plates, expensive unwieldy hardbacks and my mother, who kept forgetting to send them back before the crucial eight days’ return time, kept having to pay for them. They were stacked in the back room on the floor under the coffee table and there were more each time I came home at the end of a term.

I am wondering where all those useless books ended up, where they are now, whether they are still piled up unread somewhere in my father’s house, when I hear the taxi driver speak. I open my eyes. The red light above his head is lit.

See how close we are, he says.

At the back of his voice the middle-class lady’s voice is telling him to turn left in twenty yards.

Nearly home, he says.

Nearly home, I say.

He edges his cab between the cars parked on either side of the narrow roads before my own narrow road. He drives well.

You laughed in your sleep, he says. It must have been a good sleep.

He pulls up outside my house. It isn’t as much on the meter as I thought it’d be. It is exactly the amount he told me it would be. I get the money out and count it and try to scrape together a good enough tip and I want to ask him, who called you Wasim? was it your mother or your father? is it after someone? does it mean something? what does it mean? I want to say, are you married? have you any children? are your parents still living? are they old enough to be supposed to be taking medication for anything and are they refusing to? did you grow up in Luton? what was it like to? what’s it like there since Vauxhall closed and so many people lost their jobs? can we not just drive somewhere else, choose a place at random? could we go somewhere and not know where we’re going till we got there? could we leave the navigation system off and just see where we ended up?

I get out of the cab and give him the money.

Thank you, I say.

Your book, he says. Don’t forget.

I reach back in and pick it up off the seat.

He is looking at his watch now. Look, he says. We made good time. We took good roads. We were lucky.

He writes his number on the back of a receipt and I tell him I’ll call him next time I need to come home. He drives up to the end of the road and round the corner, out of sight. I find my keys, unlock my front door, go in and close it behind me.

believe me

I’m having an affair, I said.

No you’re not, you said.

It was Sunday morning. Outside was the sound of church bells and someone mowing a lawn; it was September; there wouldn’t be many more lawnmowing days this year. I had made you coffee and you had gone out and brought home the croissants and then taken your clothes back off and left them on the floor and got back into bed beside me, as usual. You put your arms around my middle and rested your head against my back.

I am, I said. Don’t you believe me?

You’re not having an affair, you said behind me.

Actually, no, you’re right, I said. I’m not having an affair. It’s not an affair, it’s much more than an affair. Actually I’m married to a man you’ve never met with whom I have three children you don’t know about.

Ah, you said.

And every day when I leave the house and you think I’m going to work, actually I go to see my family.

You go to someone else’s house –, you said.

Well, it’s my house too –, I said.

And you stay there all day? you said. From half-past eight till six?

There’s a lot to do there, I said. There’s the clearing up after breakfast and the washing and the ironing and the making the beds and the cleaning the house –

Don’t you have a home help? you said.

– and the getting lunch ready for them all coming back from school, now that the schools are back in, and making sure they leave the house on time and then clearing up after lunch and picking them up from school at 3.30 and seeing that they do their homework properly, and that’s on the days when I don’t do any shopping or have to look after Eric’s mother, I said.

Who’s Eric? you said.

Luckily I can do a lot of the food shopping online now, I said. That saves me an incredible amount of time, you wouldn’t believe how much time. Occasionally I even have the chance to sit down by myself at the dining-room table in my other house and read a magazine or a bit of a book.

I can’t believe you’ve got a dining-room table I don’t know about, you said. I can’t believe you haven’t introduced me to your children. I would love to know your children. What are their names?

Ben is twelve, he’s really good at skiing, I said. He won the school prize last year on their dry ski slope. We were very proud of him when he got the certificate and the book at the prize-giving in June. We clapped like anything. We had real trouble finding a school that would understand him but Parkside seems to suit him. Academically he’s a bit, well, recalcitrant, but they think he’ll pick up, and we’re getting him extra tuition, and he does love maths, like his father.

His father loves maths? you said.

Well, he did when he was at school apparently, I said.

But you hated maths, you said.

Opposites attract, I said, and then there’s Amanda, Amanda is ten, she’s a real, you know, bossy-boots, always telling the boys off, and she likes to perform, sing and dance, she’s really very good, she’s been taking tap lessons, her teacher says she’s quite rhythmically advanced and I know she’ll be running the school newspaper single-handedly soon, I’m sure she’s going to end up being an important journalist one day, she’s really very good with words.

That’s only two, you said. There’s another one.

The third’s my baby, I said. Jonathan. He’s seven.

He’s your favourite, you said. I can tell by the way you talk about him.

Well, he’s my baby, I said.

But how did you manage to keep them a secret from me for so long? you said.

I’m very discreet, I said.

You can’t be discreet with pregnancy, you said. How did you keep three pregnancies hidden?

I ate very little, I said. I was very careful. I actually lost weight when I was pregnant. And, well, you know the conferences I sometimes have to go away on for work?

What, when you go away for long weekends? you said.

Remember the one that was in Hawaii ten years ago –, I said.

The one that lasted a fortnight and you came back with jetlag? you said.

Difficult pregnancy, I said. Amanda. She was the wrong way up. They wanted to give me a Caesarean but I refused.

You didn’t want a scar on your lovely abdomen, you said.

That’s right, I said. How would I have explained a scar to you?

But what about that T-shirt you brought me back that says ‘I love Honolulu’? you said.

It took a bit of organizing, but organizationally I’m very good, I said.

And how long have you been living this double life? you said.

Oh, just since the day you and I met, I said.

What, the whole time? you said. All those years?

I met my husband Eric the exact same day I met you, I said.

He’s called Eric? you said.

Yes, his name’s Eric, I said. What’s wrong with that? Why are you laughing? I hope you’re not laughing at the name Eric.

Eric’s a really stupid name, you said, even for a fantasy character.

Eric isn’t a fantasy character, I said. He’s my husband. And if you knew Eric personally, like I do, you wouldn’t think it was a stupid name.

And is Eric as good at this as I am? you said from under the covers as you kissed down across my stomach and slipped your arms under then over my thighs to hold me down.

I couldn’t possibly compare you, I said after we’d surfaced, breathing evenly again, from you making love to me. I mean, how could I? Eric is my husband. You’re my lover. You both fulfil different needs and roles.

I’m disappointed in you, you said sitting up. You’re so unradical.

Unradical’s not a word, I said.

I mean, listen, you said. You get the chance to invent another life for yourself and what do you do?

What do you mean, invent? I said. I’m not inventing anything.

You could have been anyone, you said, anyone in the world. You could have been a, a superheroine. You could have worked for MI5, or the government.

What? Me, tell lies? I said.

You could have been a cat burglar, or someone who ran away and joined a circus and trained elephants to put their feet on beach balls, or, I don’t know, a friend and confidante of the rich and famous who helped Kim Basinger out with her problems and got that man who’s on television out of jail and into drug rehabilitation –

What man? I said.

I don’t know his name, you said, he went to jail, he’s on that programme with the thin woman.

What thin woman? I said.

That TV programme I hate, you said. Never mind him. My point is: you could have been an important peacekeeping force at the UN. You could have been the doctor who is working to discover the cure for BSE in humans before it gets us all. But no. A husband. Three children. A mother-in-law, for God’s sake.

I’m telling you, I said. Elaine is a real pain in the neck.

Who’s Elaine? you said.

My mother-in-law, I said, and you’ll never believe the lies she tells Er about me.

Tells who? you said.

Er, I said. Short for Eric.

You swore and slapped the bedclothes with both your hands. Much more of this and I’m going to go mad, you said.

I am too if she tells him that lie any more about me being a secret alcoholic drinking by myself all day in the house, I said, I’m sure she phones him at night when I’m not there and winds him up. I’m sure she’s told him I’m having an affair. I’m sure she’s on at him to take the children and leave me. Not that Er would believe her, though.

No, you said, because he trusts you, doesn’t he?

Well, I don’t mean to boast but we do know each other very well, I said. But the last time I looked at the whisky decanter, I swear it wasn’t just dust, I swear there was a thin chalkline round the outside, you know, marking the level. And you know when you pick up the phone and you can hear a little click –

That little click that means that someone else might be listening to what you’re saying? you said. Is that the little click you mean?

That’s it, I said. So you can see the kind of woman she is. She never liked me. Not since the day I married him.

I can’t believe I’m even in bed with you, you said. You are such a cliché it’s not true.

It is true, I said. All of it. You know I never lie.

And where do Eric and Ben and Amanda and Jonathan and Elaine think you are now? you said. Where do they think you are every night, and every weekend, and on Christmases and Easters and bank holidays?

I’m a busy woman, I said. I’m a modern girl. They know I’ve got a life to lead.

I was just wondering, you said.

What? I said.

Your Eric, you said. What does he look like?

Why? I said.

Don’t be so suspicious, you said. For instance, has he got a little moustache?

Oh no, I said, not my Er.

Yes, that’s right, you said. Neither has my one. Is he balding and a little overweight?

Absolutely not, I said. My Er is in the prime of his life.

I thought so, you said.

What do you mean? I said. And what do you mean, neither has
your one
got a moustache?

I’ve got something to tell you, you said.

What? I said.

I’m having an affair, you said.

No, you’re not, I said.

With a man called Eric, you said. I’m pretty sure from your description that it’s the same Eric.

My Eric? I said.

Well, he’s my Eric too, you said.

No way, I said.

I’ve known Ric since we were kids, you said. We were at school together. I remember how he loved maths. We grew up together, then our lives took different paths. He’s a family man now.

There is no way you’re taking over my other life, I said.

We meet during the day when his wife thinks he’s at work, you said. His mother, Elaine, she’ll be elderly now; she was a friend of my mother’s, you know, they used to smoke cigarettes and stand and laugh with each other at the back doors of the houses on the council estate we lived on –

Ah. Now. My Er didn’t grow up on a council estate –, I said.

Ric always lies about it, he was so ashamed of our upbringing, you said. Everything is very fragile with him, he lives a lie.

What do you mean? I said.

Well, his wife for instance, you said.

What about her? I said.

Well, I worry for her, you said. Her husband having an affair. Alone in the house all day drinking by herself, or stuck with those horrible children. The eldest boy’s practically a juvenile delinquent –

He’s what? I said.

All that business with the police and the correction home, you said, and his sister’s no better, she’s only ten and she was caught shoplifting vodka from Oddbins and when the police brought her home they said they’d never met such a foulmouthed child, she got out of the car in her ballet tutu and she was swearing swears at them, I swear I’ve never heard before some of the swears she used, they were so obscene. And that little one. The ‘baby’, they call him.

What about him? I said.

Well, he’s the baby, you said. He’s the mother’s favourite, you know. He’s her image. He’s nothing like his father. Because, to tell you the truth, the thing about my relationship with Ric.

Is? I said.

Well, I think if I were to admit the truth, you said.

Uh huh? I said.

I’d have to say, you said, that the only reason I still have anything to do with him is his wife.

His wife? I said.

She’s so beautiful, you said. She’s so lovely. To be honest, I’m hopelessly in love with his wife. I only stay close to Ric so I can stay close to her. She’s a woman full of potential. I’m sure she’s a person capable of so many other things.

Given the chance, I said.

Exactly, you said.

We made love. We spent the rest of the morning making it, then some of the afternoon. We began when you pressed my thighs apart with a pressure so subtle and so sure that it caught me by surprise and stopped me in mid-sentence, I breathed in, and you slid between them and traced with your tongue the thin line of hairs on my stomach leading down to my groin, then shifted up and fully on to me and kissed me openly, with skill, because you know me so well, and then me on you because I can read you like a book and because the thing about a beloved book, if it’s a good one, is that it shifts like music; you think you know it, you’ve read it so many times, of course you know it, of course the pleasure of it is in how well you know it, but then you hear, in the background, the thing you never heard in it before, and with the turn of a page you see a combination of words you know you’ve never seen before, you thought you knew this book but it dazzles you with the different book it is, yet again, and not just that but the different person you have become, the different person you are now, reading it again, and you, my love, are an excellent book for me, and then us both together, which takes some talent with rhythm, but luckily we are quite talented at reading each other.

We made love all morning and some of the afternoon. The hours passed. Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of the autumn. It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four. The clouds were high and the swallows would be here for another month or so before they left for the south before they returned again next summer.