He could not get close to Sonia and be on intimate terms with her because she did not know the barrister was not her father, and his own secret cast him out of the intimate sphere where Monica and he had lived together. He was only half there, his other half stayed outside, and all the time he had to show himself to her sideways on so that she should not discover his unknown side, obscured by lies and dissimulation. The strange thing was that she was not surprised. Obviously she had grown used to not seeing him in full figure because they had gradually come to see each other in their fixed roles as colleagues, sexual partners and financial allies.
They started to talk less, more superficially on his part, since he felt the necessity for censorship. And on hers? He didn’t know. He never discovered when she started to distance herself, engaged as he was in covering his own remoteness with conventional demonstrations of tenderness and the usual chat about everyday matters. In time he forgot what it was she must not get to know. It stopped meaning anything. It didn’t matter who Sonia’s father was, and he grew indifferent to Sonia herself, a chance passing delusion, but then Monica and he had already grown used to the unnoticeable distance that had arisen. It had already made them less to each other, more indistinct.
Only in bed was he completely surrendered to her. That is, his body was, and their bodies’ commerce became a test of what things were like between them, when afterwards she cuddled up to him with a satisfied sigh and said it was good, or asked anxiously if it had been good for him. The question made it sound as if their bodies were no more than tools for the other’s satisfaction, and that was how it seemed now and then. When she straddled him and rode at a furious gallop on the spot, he sometimes thought of the little painted horses mounted on a plunger that children can ride on when you put a coin in the slot. It seemed to him that they were alone with their separate desire and satisfaction. He felt lonely in spite of their being as close as anyone can be. He felt he was seeing her body and his own from another place, but where was that?
It was raining harder. Every gust of wind threw rain at his face. It had grown cold. He rose from the threshold with stiff legs and threw his cigarette stub onto the lawn before closing the sliding door. It kept glowing on in the dark blades, surprisingly long. Then it went out. His eyes fell on the grey television screen, with the sofa and a standard lamp reflected in it. He took his glass and the whisky bottle into the bathroom. A bath, that was the thing. He put the plug into its hole and turned on the hot water until steam arose. Then he turned the cold tap on slowly, but only enough to stop him from being scalded.
As he undressed he pondered whether it was really the affair with Sonia that had ruined his marriage, and in that case whether the guilt or the memory of her young body had been the deciding factor. His clearest memory of her was the moment before they kissed each other for the first time, when she had hung up her jumper to dry on the floor-planing machine and strutted around among the paint-pots in the empty corner room clad only in bra, skirt and high-heeled shoes. As she went over to him and bent down her head to meet his eyes through her wet hair, there was a second when the well-known world raised a flap to reveal something quite different, so briefly that he could not make out what it was. The rest was less clear, his treachery and the wildness, her body beneath his on Lea’s mattress in what was to be the nursery. She had disappeared from him behind the grimaces of delirium.
He dropped his clothes in a heap on the floor and looked at himself in the mirror. He had grown heavier in recent years. He considered masturbating, but couldn’t be bothered. He could barely achieve a proper erection on his own, and it was a long time since he had had the opportunity of discovering whether a woman could do a better job. He remembered a nurse after a Christmas dinner when he had just moved to this town, but she had left shortly afterwards. He turned off the taps and got into the bath. Slowly he sank down into the hot water and leaned back with a sigh as the heat penetrated his flesh right to the bones. He had forgotten to take off the plaster, it loosened itself from his heel. Delicate winding threads of iodine spread like smoke in the greenish water.
He had been just as alone when he was in bed with Sonia as when he was with Monica again later. Alone some place far inside his body as it did what the two women and he himself expected of it, mechanical and obedient as a willing little horse. The difference was that with Sonia it had been sex from beginning to end. Other relationships had started with sex and had gradually come to include something more, friendship, tenderness, confidence. The particular thing about his relationship with Monica had been that it began with friendship, with an innocent, ironical agreement, when they had met in the circle of young friends who went skiing together. Whereas in the end it was about less and less until it ended in nothing but sex, food, washing and pay-cheques.
Not until long after becoming friends and much to their surprise had they found themselves together under a woollen blanket in a holiday apartment in the French Alps. If he had not broken his ankle and if she had not felt obliged to entertain him while the others were out in the snow, it might never have come to anything. But there had been a shy and unexpected gentleness in her otherwise ironic, authoritative or matter-of-fact face when she lowered it to his and pulled the blanket over their heads like a tent. That made him love her without warning, without transition, and he really experienced their bodies’ first, tentative approaches as the result of love, not as its confirmation, for neither had as yet asked anything or demanded an answer.
It was still raining in the morning, and it went on raining until midday. When Robert went into Lucca’s single room on his rounds, an old man was in there. Everything was as usual, apart from the old man the patients were the same as the day before, but he suddenly realised he felt bored. Since Lucca was brought into hospital he had grown used to seeing her twice a day, on his morning rounds and in the afternoon before going home, when he sat by the window listening to her story. Sometimes she did not say anything special, or she asked questions about the music he had recorded. At other times he stayed just for a quarter of an hour silently sharing a cigarette with her until she fell asleep.
To start with she had been an interesting interruption in his orderly life. When she had gone he discovered he had grown accustomed to her being there. Something was lacking without her, although her bed was quickly filled by another patient. He had not felt this with any other patient, and it disturbed him a little, although not until now. He suddenly saw that his afternoons with Lucca had been a breach of his medical professionalism. He had not given a thought to the possibility of his colleagues and the nursing staff finding it strange, but when he was on his rounds on Monday morning he felt he was being watched. He took pains to behave as if everything was normal, which in fact it was. That was the boring thing about that Monday. Everything was normal again after an interruption that had been so long that he had forgotten the everyday routine that had been broken.
It cleared up a little at midday and the sun shone cautiously on the wet grass of the lawns. He was in his office when Jacob put his head round the door. He smiled boyishly. It looked as if they might be able to play after all. If it didn’t start to rain again the court would have time to dry. Robert had forgotten they had arranged to play tennis that day, but Jacob didn’t seem to notice his confused expression. He smiled secretively. His wife had been away visiting her parents all Sunday. With the children. He made a fist and moved it to and fro beside his hip before closing the door behind him.
Several times Jacob had entertained him in the canteen with stories of his breathless trysts with the gym teacher, until one day Robert cut him short by snapping at him that he should be more discreet. Jacob looked quite scared and he was himself taken aback at his snarling tone. One evening when the weather was reasonable he had been persuaded to come over for dinner. While Jacob in his apron stood at the barbecue grilling steaks his wife walked past him, and he suddenly grabbed her round the waist, making her squeal, throwing a laddish glance at Robert. The man-to-man signal seemed repellent to Robert, but he was amazed at Jacob’s cold-bloodedness. Had he himself been as cold-blooded? He must have been.