‘I tried to explain this to Nik there and then. And he was so generous, so understanding. Which only made me feel worse, of course. I wouldn’t have blamed him and would have felt a lot better if he’d been angry and punished me in some way, and demanded that I drive him home at once. But he didn’t. You know what he did? He talked to me for most of the night, working it out with me, trying to explain why he couldn’t believe as I did or live as I did. And when we were too tired to go on, we went to bed in the tent, each in our own sleeping bag. I didn’t sleep a wink of course. I was in turmoil. I’d passed one test but quite failed another. I’d passed the test of temptation but failed the test of compassion – of treating another human being with respect. And afterwards, after the accident, which I came to think of as the punishment I deserved, he visited me in hospital and said that had been one of the happiest nights of his life, when real things, things that matter, had been confronted honestly between us. And he told me how much he loved me.
‘That young man, that boy, put me to shame. I’ve always felt ashamed of how I treated him in the name of my religion and my beliefs, but actually from bigotry and arrogance and lack of compassion. In his innocence he showed me how much I still had to learn and how far I still had to go before I could count myself a truly religious person.’
*
I can quite see why Catholics confess their sins in curtained boxes, speak in whispers, with the priest’s face veiled by a grille, and why psychoanalysts sit where they can’t be seen while their patients spill out their secrets. Julie hadn’t looked at me nor I at her while she talked.
Just as it can be disturbing when you’re a child to see your mother cry, so it can be when a loved adult confesses bad behaviour. I felt this, but also felt (again) that Julie was treating me as a grown-up and an equal, as a true friend. And this made me feel better and stronger, though still confused about Edward and me.
When there was a pause, because it seemed indecent to speak at once after such a revelation, I said, ‘Do you mean I’m doing something like that to Edward? You know – that I’m gulling him.’ (I’d never heard anyone use that word before and rather liked it.)
Julie smiled. ‘No. I meant Edward might be gulling you.’
‘Having a bit on the side?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I don’t want to be a side dish. I only ever want to be the whole meal.’
‘With no extras.’
‘And no waiter, either, thank you. I’ll do the serving.’
‘And decide on the menu.’
‘And what we’ll drink.’
‘And where and when and with whom.’
We laughed. Got the giggles, in fact, as one does after such a solemn conversation and the whole business suddenly seems very silly and you must release the tension and get rid of the gunk.
I also knew I’d made a decision, and didn’t want to talk about it.
And then it was time for soup.
11
Dear Edward, I wrote, I have thought a lot about last Saturday. I feel it is best that I give up my job. It would not be right for me to continue. I hope you understand. Thanks for giving me this opportunity. I think you are a kind and generous man, and I have enjoyed working for you. Yours sincerely, Cordelia.
I posted it to his office in an envelope marked Private and Confidential, because I knew the rule was that only he opened such letters.
This was my fourth attempt. In previous versions I’d tried to explain. I didn’t want to cause him or me any trouble. I didn’t think any good would come of us going on because of him being married. I didn’t like the secrecy that would be involved. I didn’t want to be his bit on the side, though I tried to find polite words for it (his secret lover, his mistress – how old-fashioned that sounded! – his girlfriend). But however I expressed it, it seemed whining or apologetic or pleading or prissy. I also worried that his secretary might accidentally (on purpose even) open the letter or find it on his desk. Or even his wife. Then there’d be trouble anyway. So I settled for a brief generalised goodbye.
For the rest of the day I felt a pleasant sense of relief. A burden lifted, a wrong put right, a problem solved. I even felt lighter, floating, enjoying ordinary tasks, like doing my washing and tidying a drawer and finishing school work. But that evening as I lay in bed reviewing the day – going through each event in turn and savouring or dismissing it, according to whether it pleased or displeased, and making a follow-up list of things to do the next day (really, I think there is a streak of the bureaucrat in me!) – I thought how cowardly I’d been. I ought to have told Edward face-to-face. Then I could have explained, because telling is different from writing. You can adapt and change as you go along according to the other person’s responses.
I was so bothered by this that I couldn’t get to sleep until I decided to see him next day.
I arrived just before the office closed, giving his secretary the excuse that there was some of last Saturday’s work I needed to speak to him about.
Edward took me into his office, closed the door, sat me in front of his desk, pulled my letter out of the inside pocket of his jacket and held it up so that I could see. All this while asking me how I was and was everything okay at school and me giving polite but strained relies. I was aware of his secretary in the next room, listening. (Because I’d have listened. Your own duplicity makes you suspicious of everyone else.)
Edward said, matter-of-fact, employer to employee, ‘Don’t do this.’
I said, awkward, uncomfortable, trying to reply in kind, ‘I shouldn’t have. Written it, I mean. Should have told you. Sorry. That’s why I’ve come. To explain.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ Edward said with careful pleasantness. ‘I mean, don’t resign.’
Afraid of getting it wrong, aware of being overheard, I couldn’t say anything.
Edward folded the letter and returned it to his pocket, gave me a look that wanted to reach inside me, and said, ‘I need you.’
This undid me. I felt if I opened my mouth to say anything I’d deflate like a balloon and end up in a mess on the floor.
‘I need you. In the office. Helping me.’
I managed, ‘But.’
‘Nothing else. Promise.’
‘Can I?’
‘What? … Think about it?’
I nodded. I couldn’t say anything there and then.
‘Sure. Think about it. Call me. Tomorrow? Please say yes. Turn up on Saturday as usual and I’ll prove it to you. The last Saturday before Christmas. Then the holiday. A fresh start in the New Year. Okay?’
I had to leave, had to go. Confusion again. I stood up.
‘You’ll do that? Think about it?’
I nodded. Made for the door.
As I reached it, Edward said, ‘Cordelia.’
Hearing him say my name turned my bones to water.
I looked at him. He was unbearably handsome. I longed for him to hold me.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
I left, head down, with blind eyes and lunging heart.
There are three little words which women should always keep at arm’s length when spoken by men who attract us. Three little words we should indulge only with caution.
I need you.
Even before I got back home I knew I would be with Edward in his office the following Saturday.
He needs me, I thought. And I need him.
The word need was wrong, of course. The right word, the one I would not allow myself to use, was want.
I knew he wanted me. And I wanted him.
I could think of nothing else that evening but him holding me and his kisses.
How powerful is the desire to be knowingly seduced.
12
The next Saturday Edward behaved impeccably. Not a word about the previous Saturday, or our meeting in his office, only about work. For most of the time he closeted himself in his office. Even during lunch he sat well away from me and talked about boring things like the latest world news
, which wasn’t boring in itself but was boring then when I wanted him to talk about us. There was an invisible fence between us. Little C wanted to put pepper in his coffee and itching powder down his shirt. Big C wanted to sit on his lap and be kissed by him. Or was it Big C who wanted to pepper him up and Little C who wanted to sit on his lap? I was completely mixed up about who I was and what I wanted, so ended the day in a bad mood and with a headache.
Maybe, I thought as Edward said goodbye, have a happy Christmas, in such remote tones he might as well have been addressing me from the moon, maybe I should give up this job and give up any wishes re Edward and have done with all this rubbish. But instead I made myself flash him my coyest thank-you smile and wished him and his wife a happy Christmas and said, ‘Yes, see you,’ when he said, ‘See you the first Saturday in the New Year.’
There had been lovely winter sun when I left home. Now it was raining. Set in for the night, as Granddad used to say. It was like cycling through a car wash. I wasn’t dressed for it: woolly turtleneck and jeans. I was soaked in minutes. But the frosty rain washed my headache away. I thought of Will and how he would be home in two or three days and of how I wanted him and how maybe it was all right really about Hannah.
Am I, I wondered, like the English weather, fickle in moods and changeable by nature?
What’s more, Cordelia Kenn, I said to myself, here you are with Edward Malcolm in the palm of your hand, slavish for your favours, and you’re revelling in your power, just as Julie said you would. You are outrageous, Ms Kenn! And all too pleased with yourself for your own good!
I started to sing loudly, improvising a tune to fit old Shakes’s words and the swirling turn of my pedals.
‘What is love? … ’Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth … hath present laughter;
What’s to come … is still unsure.
In delay … there lies no ple-e-e-enty,
Then come and kiss me … sweet and twe-e-e-enty;
Youth’s a stuff … yey yey yey … will not en-d-u-u-ure.’
People waiting at a bus stop peered at this spectacle as I splurged by. I waved and shouted, ‘Youth’s a stuff will not endure … YOUTH’S a STUFF will NOT ENDURE … [sotto voce] THANK GOD!’
13
Christmas. Dad calls it Mammonmas: the celebration of greed, sentimentality, hypocrisy, brass-faced commercialism, the detritus of a dead religion. He should know, he’s an expert on all of those.
Will came home, eager to see me. I forgot about Hannah in the excitement of beginning again, of recovering each other, the bliss of playing our repertoire of love-making and music, the pleasure of our familiar routines: our early-morning and late-night calls, a daily run with a pause at our kissing tree, working together (Will at college essays, me reading set books for next term), the times apart (what is he doing, what is he saying, who with, who to, how is he feeling, is he thinking about me, what is he thinking?), the delicious moment of every meeting – clinging, smelling, tasting, touching, plumbing the eyes – and the old irritations – Mrs B., Will’s reticence, friends from school wanting to know and me not wanting to tell.2
I say the ‘excitement of beginning again’, but it was not a repeat of our beginning. Will’s body was firmer, stronger, I felt the rasp of the bristles on his face where he shaved, always before he went to college a soft fur, the skin on his body was no longer smooth and silky, and hair was growing where it hadn’t, on his chest. His hands were larger and rough. His voice was deeper. In his speech and in the way he treated me he was more grown up and far more confident. Especially in bed, where he did things he hadn’t done before. I’d always felt we were equals in everything, including our sex. Now he was more than I was in every way, he was the leader, he was in charge. He was more a man than a boy, whereas I was still a girl. I worried about that. Would he notice, would he mind?
And then came the calamity and the arrival of the demons.
The first hint. One night while Will and I were lying in my bed, curled up together, murmuring about this and that, I don’t remember what, Will began talking about Hannah. How she’d helped him with his essays, how she’d cheered him up when he felt low, how she was the only one in his year he felt was a real friend. My earlier worries returned. I felt a twinge of jealousy and a bit put out that he was talking about another girl while we were cuddled together after making love. But I didn’t say anything, I don’t know why – because I didn’t want to spoil things just then, or because I didn’t want him to know I was upset, or whatever. It would have been better if I had said something.
A couple of days later, we were practising when Will’s mobile went off. He never used to leave it on when we were together so it took me by surprise for that reason alone, and even more when he put his oboe down and answered.
‘Hey, Hannah!’ he said, all smiles and cheeriness, and started wandering around the room, listening and laughing, and talking too loudly in that irritating way people do when using a mobile. ‘How you doing? … You finished it? Great! How many pages? … Pogo, pogo … You’ve had an answer? Never! What does he say? … An interview. Lucky old goat! Congrats. We’ll celebrate … Okay, but listen, have you got a reference for the ecology of Scotch pines? … Hang on, I’ll write it down …’ That kind of conversation. And using words, phrases, I’d never heard him use before – ‘Lucky old goat!’ (Eh?) ‘Pogo pogo.’ (What the hell does that mean?) While I sat frozen at the piano like Patience on a monument, feeling ignored, out of it, tense and in the past tense.
And when he’d finished he was all a-bubble: Hannah had pulled off an interview with the Great God Oliver Rackham at Cambridge for a place next year, she’d finished her essay on such-and-such, which he hadn’t even started, and blah-diblah, and sorry but she needed to talk to him because her parents were never interested in anything she did, only in her budding bank-manager brother who was earning a stack and was regarded as a success whereas Hannah was earning nothing and wasting her talents on trees, et cetera et cetera et cetera, till I said none too sweetly, ‘Could we get on with our practice, do you think?’ and he said ‘Yes, sorry,’ and we started again but we might as well not have bothered because neither his mind nor mine was on the music.
*
It was after that that the demons arrived. At first in the night, as is their wont. And then, having clawed their way into my mind, they appeared at any moment, day or night, whenever the merest flicker of a thought gave them the chance to poke and slash.
What did these demons play on? Jealousy, and fear of betrayal. Why those two weaknesses? Because they were strong in me. The demons of the Devil don’t use your weak weaknesses against you, they use your strong ones. If you’re rational and logical, they argue their case rationally and logically. If you’re loyal and faithful, they turn those against you. If you’re passionate and emotional, they make you passionate and emotional about your worst fears. Your weak weaknesses are no use to them. For example, it would be no good them trying to get at me by saying people are making fun of me behind my back, because, though I don’t like it, I actually don’t really care if they do. And it would be no good them telling me that people who pretend to like me actually don’t (as the chavs did sometimes) because, though I like to be liked – who doesn’t? – I don’t actually expect anyone to like me and I really don’t care whether people who do not matter to me like me or not. If they had told Will that something he had done was rubbish, not up to scratch, a bodge, he’d have suffered agonies. His pride would have been sorely wounded. But not me. I’d just think, too bad, do better next time.
Something else I learned about the Devil’s demons. They find the strongest weaknesses you didn’t know were yours and use those against you. Before Will, if anyone had accused me of being a disgustingly jealous person, I’d have laughed and said, Don’t be so ridiculous, I’m not a jealous person at all. Had I been told I have a bad hang-up about betrayal, that I fear it so much I am wary of any close attachment with another person, with a lover
especially, because I unconsciously expect they will be unfaithful, disloyal, and betray me with someone else, I’d have said it was nonsense. Then to discover, as I did at the wicked hands of these cruel demons, just how deeply, painfully jealous I am of anyone I truly love, and how vulnerable I am to fear that they will betray me – to discover that this is how I really am was a torture in itself. I disliked myself for having such feelings. And making you hate yourself is as much the aim of the Devil’s demons as making you hate the person of whom you are jealous.
And so they appeared, these cunning ogres, and began to pour the venom of jealousy into my soul and to burn my heart with the suspicion that Will had been unfaithful.
Look, the demons said, you can see how it is, you’re not blind. He’s living a hundred miles away, with Hannah right there a few study bedrooms away from him, he likes her a lot, that’s perfectly obvious, isn’t it, you only have to listen to the way he talks about her to know that, he doesn’t talk to you like that, does he, he doesn’t get all bubbly with you, not any more anyway, does he, I mean just think about it, he’s probably in love with her, wouldn’t you agree? And remember the way he talked about her the other day when you were in bed together, I mean in bed together after making love, after having SEX, for heaven’s sake. I mean, come on, Cordelia! If someone really loves you and only you, would he talk all lovey-dovey about another girl and tell you how wonderful she is and how helpful she’s been and how she’s his only real friend, would he talk like that at any time, never mind straight after you’ve made love? Would he? Be honest with yourself, Cordelia. Would he? No! Never!
So there they are, the two of them, Will and Hannah, together all the time, studying together, going out together, helping each other, joking together, eating together, and what else? Sleeping together, of course. Obvious, isn’t it. Why doesn’t he write to you often, why doesn’t he call you often (he used to when he first got there, remember)? You know the answer. Because all his attention is going on Hannah. You’re just the girl back home, the one he went out with while you were at school. Well, now he’s at school with someone else, with Hannah, who’s attractive and sexy in her way and is lively and funny (he thinks) and puts herself out for him. She wants him and she’s got him. She goes into his room at college as if it were her own. She’s used to being there. You saw that when you visited. Think what the two of them must do together. Since he came home, hasn’t he been better in bed than before he went to college? Yes, he has. Why? Because Hannah has taught him a thing or two and they’ve had lots of practice. Night after night fucking each other. How could he have got so much better if he’d remained faithful to you and had no sex with anybody else but you?