Fuck it, I thought.
I hit the button.
I
got back to the apartment after five. At first I didn’t know if George was in. I called out, but he didn’t answer. Then,
when I went into the bedroom, I found him lying in his robe staring at the ceiling.
“George? Are you all right?”
He turned his head and looked at me as though he hadn’t heard me come in. “Fine,” he said.
“I called, you didn’t answer.”
“I took a bath, fell asleep. I was thinking.”
I bent down to give him a gentle kiss on the forehead. “If we’re going to Rob and Charles’s party,” I reminded him, “you need
to get ready. Me too.”
“Yeah, right.” He looked at his watch as he rolled off the bed and got to his feet, running his hands through his hair to
shake off his drowsiness. He went into his bathroom, I into mine.
I showered, thinking yet again what a relief it was to have my hair so short that I could leave it to look after itself. It
was just after Steve was convicted that I’d first cut it. I never knew if there was any connection between the two things,
and even less what it might be. I read once that in France after the Second World War they shaved the heads of women who had
consorted with the enemy. Was I trying to persuade myself that Steve had become some sort of enemy?
My image gazed back at me impassively from my dressing room mirror. Why is it we can never look natural in a mirror? Because
the person in it is staring at you, I suppose, and nobody ever looks entirely natural when they’re staring at you. Did I ever,
I wondered, look natural anymore?
I hesitated between a St. Laurent (long, dark, and formal) and a Ralph Lauren trouser suit (also dark and formal). What was
it with me these days? My dark and formal period? In mourning for my life?
Stop it. It would end one day, I told myself for the millionth time. I would stop thinking about myself and what I’d lost.
I would once again be as grateful as I used to be for what I’d had in the past and for what I had now. Poor George: My unhappiness
was an insult to him. It was unfair.
Why is it so hard to love nice people?
Why is “nice” such an anemic word?
Did I ever think Steve was “nice”? Not really. Stubborn, independent, ambitious. A bit of a rogue. Warm, funny, unpredictable.
Mine.
These were thoughts I didn’t need. Couldn’t afford. That part of my life was over. It had been a mistake, I must let it go,
pretend it never happened. It wasn’t my fault. The fact that I had loved a murderer simply meant that the man I loved had
committed a murder.
Did I still love him?
Why did I have to ask that?
I couldn’t forgive him for what he did. Nobody had the right to forgive somebody else’s death. Especially not me; I had been
part of the cause. It was Nadia Shelley’s jealousy when Steve dropped her for me that made her a threat to him. But he killed
her to save his career, not because he loved me. If he’d loved me enough he’d have said to hell with his career, and we’d
just have been together. But he wanted his career as well as me. That’s where people always get into trouble—wanting everything.
In the end I chose a Nicole Farhi ensemble—light, knee-length, and younger than I felt. But my mirror reassured me. From the
outside I looked fine. My reflection almost smiled at me approvingly.
George was on the terrace, leaning on the wall and looking out over the park, nursing a drink. He must have heard the click
of my heels as I approached but he didn’t turn around.
“It’s time to go,” I said, “or we’ll be late.”
He seemed almost surprised by my arrival, just as he had been when I got back earlier.
“You’re still lost in thought,” I said. “Have you been working?”
“Not really.” He looked down into his drink, twirled the ice in it, then tossed it down his throat in a single gulp.
On the way down in the elevator he continued to look strangely preoccupied, staring into space, unblinking.
“George, what is it?” I said after a while. “Is something wrong?”
He turned toward me, and his eyes seemed to take a moment to focus—as though he were on drugs, but I didn’t believe that he
was. As far as I knew he’d never used them.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I was miles away. What did you say?”
“I asked if there was something wrong.”
“No. Nothing at all. Just”—he gave a little shrug—“some ideas I’m playing with.”
We got into the car and rode without talking any further.
“What did you do today?” I asked eventually, beginning to find our silence oppressive. “Did you go out?”
“I took a walk, that’s all. In the park.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“Like who?”
“Anyone you knew.”
He seemed to need some time to think about this. Then he said, as though it had been a difficult conclusion to come to, “Not
really.”
I
was preoccupied over the next few days with an opening we had at the gallery on Tuesday—a young Brazilian painter whose first
New York show this was. But I couldn’t help noticing that George remained in a distinctly strange mood. He was restless and
nervous and slept badly. Two nights that week I woke in the small hours to find him gone from our bed. Once he was in his
study, reading; another time he was in a guest room watching television. When we were together he seemed somehow distracted
and yet obsessively watchful at the same time. Several times I caught him staring at me when he thought I wasn’t looking.
When I asked him why, he denied doing it.
At other times he would spend hours pacing in his study. Twice I came across him staring out of the window in a kind of trancelike
state. It took him some time to respond to my presence and realize I was speaking to him, then he turned with a vacant expression
as though he’d just woken up and wasn’t sure where he was. But whenever I asked him if anything was wrong, he insisted—sometimes
even snapped—that he was fine. Whatever it was, he clearly couldn’t bring himself to talk about it.
The opening went well; by Thursday we had picked up enough reviews to know we had a success on our hands. The whole collection
had sold out in days, and I was generally credited with having discovered another promising talent, which was gratifying.
For the first time in several weeks, I began to relax.
It was George’s idea that we should go up to the Berk-shires the following weekend. We had stopped using the house as much
as we used to; the memory of that night when I had confronted George with Steve was awkward for both of us. But George still
loved Eastways as much as he always had. Again, it was an unspoken understanding that we wouldn’t talk about the past, just
let bygones be bygones.
Everything always unspoken. Was it simply that we had nothing to say? When we first met, I remember, we talked all the time.
Like most couples, I suppose. In between talking we made love all the time, or most of it. It was nice.
“Nice” again.
It was still nice when we made love. But it was an occasional thing. As rare as really talking.
I wonder if life with Steve would have gone the same way? It showed no sign of doing so during those first two years together.
The sex was still great even when he started to worry about losing control of his life through marrying a “spoiled” rich girl.
What a fool he was to have thought like that. What a fool I was to let him. The fact that we were young is our only excuse.
Later, when we met up again, Steve and I, the sex was still great. Even better. It was like rediscovering something we both
thought had gone forever. Well, I’d thought it had gone from my life forever. Not Steve, perhaps. He’d had mistresses.
Like Nadia Shelley.
Who had meant more to him than he’d wanted me to know.
On Saturday we had dinner with a few friends at Tom and Cecily Winters’s house; they lived only a couple of miles from Eastways.
Tom was an investment banker and Cecily wrote books about gardening, which she had all the time in the world for now after
bringing up three kids. They had been my parents’ friends and were closer to their age than ours, as was most of the crowd
they knew.
Evenings there never ran on late; we were back home before eleven. George said he would have a nightcap in the library and
watch the news. I bit back an impulse to suggest he’d already had enough. I had noticed he was drinking more than usual during
dinner. He’d lost his train of thought a few times when he was talking, then interrupted other people because he wanted to
go back to something they’d said fifteen minutes ago. Nobody minded terribly: Everybody has the right to have a couple of
drinks too many from time to time. All the same it was surprising, and there was obviously some sort of hidden reason for
it.
He had the good sense not even to suggest driving home. The moment he got into the car he put his head back and fell asleep.
Or pretended to. Maybe he just didn’t want to talk because he was afraid I might ask him yet again what was on his mind, and
he would get defensive and say I was imagining it, and quite possibly we’d have an argument. This way made it simpler. I didn’t
disturb him, and he woke up the moment we came to a stop in our drive.
I went upstairs to undress while he had his nightcap in front of the television in the library. I flipped on the set in the
bedroom to see what was happening in the world. I’d missed the headlines, but I’d catch up with them later. My hands were
behind my neck unfastening the top of my dress when film of Steve came on screen. It was cut together from his election campaigns
and court appearances, both as a lawyer and a man accused of murder. I watched unblinking, holding my breath, as the newscaster
intoned:
“Steven Coleman, former lawyer and rising politician who was convicted last year of murdering his ex-mistress, was seriously
injured today in a knifing incident in Ballard prison, where he is serving a life sentence. The motive for the attack remains
unclear, but Coleman is undergoing emergency surgery at City Hospital, where a spokesperson confirmed that his injuries are
life-threatening.”
The next item continued at the same volume, but I heard nothing of it. I turned away from the screen, surprised by my inability
to know how I felt about the news. It was something I hadn’t been ready for. I knew there were dangers in prison for men like
Steve. Others would see him as a symbol of the world that had made losers out of them, and they would hit back. I had read
that he was going into a protected wing in a special part of the prison. After that I’d tried not to think about the risks.
But now…
I felt closed in suddenly. Trapped. I needed air, but I didn’t want to go downstairs to get out to the garden. I didn’t want
to see George. At least not just then. Almost certainly he would have seen the same item on the news and I didn’t know what
I would say to him. I didn’t want to have to talk about it, not to him or anybody else.
There was a door from the old nursery that led to a corridor off which there was another door. Since there were no children
in the house these days, it was locked only from the inside. It opened onto winding steps that led in one direction down to
the ground floor of the house, and in another up to the terrace on top of the clock tower. I started to climb. I hadn’t been
up there for the best part of a year. We’d been having some work done, but it was all finished now. I stepped out under a
clear but moonless night sky and took a deep breath of cool fresh air.
As I stood there looking out over the darkened garden, I tried to analyze how much of me wanted to rush to the hospital to
be at Steve’s side and how much of me knew it was an absurd fantasy that I should let drop at once. For one thing, what made
me think they would even let me see him? After all, I had no claims, no legal rights—certainly fewer than his ex-wife or his
children, or any of his family. What was I to him? Or he to me? Officially?
I wondered whether she would even go to the hospital. Linda. Would she even call up to find out how he was? I doubted it.
Her bitterness at what he’d done to her was total. If she had been handed the knife that had injured him she would probably
have plunged it in herself.
Could she, I suddenly thought, have been behind the attack? But that was unlikely. Linda would never do anything to endanger
herself, however indirectly, and being exposed as the vindictive wife behind a prison “hit” would be far too risky. It had
to be something that just happened. An incident. A prison incident.
I wondered what was happening to him at that moment. Was he unconscious or awake? In pain? Alone or with someone—a nurse,
a doctor, a guard? Was he even alive or dead? I was making such an effort to conjure up his image that I realized I was trying
in a desperate way to reach out and touch him somehow.
Stupid. That was enough. I had to stop. I was all right now. I must go back inside, back to George. He would be looking for
me, anxious to see if I’d heard the news. I could talk about it now. I was over the worst. Under control.
I turned to start down the steps, and gasped as something moved in the shadows. It was George. I hadn’t heard him follow me
up, now he stood facing me, very still, like a statue.
“You startled me,” I said—unnecessarily, with my hand clutched over my heart.
He didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time. Then he took a step closer. For some reason I took a step back. Then
he said, “You want to go to him, don’t you?”
“No,” I said.
“There’s no point in lying about it. I know.”
I tried to find his eyes in the darkness, but I couldn’t. Then he took another step toward me. I saw his eyes now. There was
something strange in them, something deep and unfathomable, or maybe he was simply so drunk he was finding it hard to focus.
At any rate he was gazing at me with an intensity I hadn’t seen before. It frightened me in a way I didn’t understand. It
was as though he had suddenly become someone I didn’t know.