‘I feel I’ve let you down.’
‘You mean you betrayed me, caused me great distress.’
‘Yes, I caused you great distress.’
Mirroring. A machine response, endorsing the last sentence spoken.
I said, ‘Listen carefully. You are now going to promise me that it will never happen again.’
He replied too immediately for my liking, ‘I promise it will never happen again.’
‘Spell it out. Let me hear it.’
‘I promise you that I will never again make love to Miranda.’
As I turned away he said, ‘But…’
‘But what?’
‘I can’t help my feelings. You have to allow me my feelings.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Do you really feel anything at all?’
‘That’s not a question I can—’
‘Answer it.’
‘I feel things profoundly. More than I can say.’
‘Difficult to prove,’ I said.
‘Indeed. An ancient problem.’
We left it at that.
Mark’s departure had an effect on Miranda. For two or three days, she was lacklustre. She tried to read but her concentration was poor. The Corn Laws lost their fascination. She didn’t eat much. I made minestrone soup and took some upstairs. She ate like an invalid, and soon pushed the bowl away. At no point during this time did she mention the death threat. She hadn’t forgiven Adam for betraying her court secrets or for calling in the social workers without her consent. One evening she asked me to stay with her. On the bed she lay on my arm, then we kissed. Our lovemaking was constrained. I was distracted by the thought of Adam’s presence and even imagined I detected the scent of warm electronics on her sheets. There was little satisfaction for us, and eventually we turned away, disappointed.
One afternoon we walked to Clapham Common. She wanted me to show her Mark’s swing park. On our way back, we went into Holy Trinity Church. Three women were arranging flowers near the altar. We sat in silence in a rear pew. At last, clumsily concealing my seriousness behind a joke, I told her that this was just the sort of rational church she and I could get married in. She murmured, ‘Please. Not that,’ as she uncoupled her arm from mine. I was offended and annoyed at myself. She in turn seemed repelled by me. On the walk home, a coolness between us set in that lasted into the following day.
That evening, downstairs, I consoled myself with a bottle of Minervois. It was the night of a storm engulfing the entire country as it rolled in from the Atlantic. A 70 mph gale. Stinging rain thrashed the windowpanes and penetrated one of the rotten frames and dripped into a bucket.
I said to Adam, ‘We have some unfinished business, you and I. What was Miranda’s accusation against Gorringe?’
He said, ‘There’s something I need to say.’
‘OK.’
‘I find myself in a difficult position.’
‘Yes?’
‘I made love to Miranda because she asked me to. I didn’t know how to refuse her without being impolite, or seeming to reject her somehow. I knew you’d be angry.’
‘Did you take any pleasure in it?’
‘Of course I did. Absolutely.’
I didn’t like his emphasis but I kept my expression blank.
He said, ‘I found out about Peter Gorringe for myself. She swore me to secrecy. Then you demanded to know and I had to tell you. Or start to. She heard me and was angry. You see the difficulty.’
‘Up to a point.’
‘Serving two masters.’
I said, ‘So you’re not going to tell me about this accusation.’
‘I can’t. I promised a second time.’
‘When?’
‘After they took the boy away.’
We were silent while I took this in.
Then Adam said, ‘There’s something else.’
In the low light from the lamp suspended over the kitchen table the hardness in his features was softened. He looked beautiful, even noble. A muscle in his high cheekbone rippled. I saw also that his lower lip was quivering. I waited.
‘I could do nothing about this,’ he said.
Before he started to explain, I knew what was coming. Ridiculous!
‘I’m in love with her.’
My pulse rate didn’t increase, but my heart felt uncomfortable in my chest, as though mishandled and left lying at a rough angle.
I said, ‘How can you possibly be in love?’
‘Please don’t insult me.’
But I wanted to. ‘There must be a problem with your processing units.’
He crossed his arms and rested them on the table. Leaning forwards, he spoke softly. ‘Then there’s nothing more to say.’
I too crossed my arms, I too leaned forwards across the table. Our faces were barely a foot apart. I too spoke softly. ‘You’re wrong. There are many things to say and this is the first. Existentially, this is not your territory. In every conceivable sense, you’re trespassing.’
I was playing in a melodrama. I took him only half seriously and was rather enjoying this game of stags-at-rut. As I was speaking, he leaned back in his chair and let his arms drop to his side.
He said, ‘I understand. But I don’t have a choice. I was made to love her.’
‘Oh, come on!’
‘I mean it literally. I now know that she had a hand in shaping my personality. She must have had a plan. This is what she chose. I swear I’ll keep my promise to you, but I can’t help loving her. I don’t want to stop. As Schopenhauer said about free will, you can choose whatever you desire, but you’re not free to choose your desires. I also know that it was your idea to let her have a hand in making me what I am. Ultimately, responsibility for the situation rests with you.’
The situation? Now it was my turn to lean back from the table. I slumped in my chair and for a minute I withdrew into thoughts of myself and Miranda. I too had no choice in love. I thought of the relevant section in the user’s handbook. There were pages I had skimmed of tables, one spectrum after another on a scale of one to ten. The sort of person I like or I adore or I love or cannot resist. While she and I were settling into our nightly routine, she was fashioning a man who was bound to love her. Some self-knowledge would have been required, some setting in motion. She would not need to love this man, this figurine, in return. As with Adam, so with me. She had wrapped us in a common fate.
I got up from the table and crossed the room to the window. The south-westerly wind was still hurling the downpour across the garden fences, against the pane. The bucket on the floor was near to overflowing. I picked it up and emptied it into the kitchen sink. The water was gin-clear, as trout fishermen say. The solution too was clear, at least in the immediate term. Time to be gained for reflection. I went back to the window with the bucket. I bent down and set it in place. I was about to do the sensible thing. I approached the table and as I passed behind Adam, I reached for the special place low on his neck. My knuckles brushed against his skin. As I positioned my forefinger, he turned in his chair and his right hand rose up to encircle my wrist. The grip was ferocious. As it grew tighter, I dropped to my knees and concentrated on denying him the satisfaction of the slightest murmur of pain, even when I heard something snap.
Adam heard it too and was instantly apologetic. He let go of me. ‘Charlie, I believe I’ve broken something. I really didn’t mean to. I’m truly sorry. Are you in a lot of pain? But please, I don’t want you or Miranda ever to touch that place again.’
I discovered the next morning, after a five-hour wait and an X-ray in the local Accident and Emergency department, that an important bone in my wrist was compromised. It was a messy break, a partly displaced scaphoid fracture, and it would take months to heal.
FIVE