Before She Met Me Read online

  And so, most nights, Ann would sit quietly through Graham’s outbursts, and at the end of the evening would stroke the side of his head and dry his tears with a handkerchief. Then she would lead him up to bed, and they would lie there, exhausted by sadness. On their backs, side by side, they looked like figures on a tomb.

  Ann screened the guests with some care. No old boyfriends, naturally. Jack would have to come, but that was all right—history had been rewritten. No one who knew too much about her past; and no one, she decided, who might want to flirt with her after a few drinks. It was beginning to sound like a soya meal.

  ‘What shall we say it’s for?’ Graham wondered over lunch.

  ‘We don’t have to, do we?’

  ‘We might be asked. Parties are always for something, aren’t they?’

  ‘Don’t people give parties just for the sake of giving parties?’

  ‘Can’t we do better than that?’

  ‘Well, it can be our wedding anniversary or something.’

  After lunch, as she carried on clearing up the house—which meant, she realized, emptying it of its keenest references to the people who lived there, making it as much a public place as possible—Ann found herself pondering more precisely what it was for. Perhaps, she concluded, it was a sort of announcement to their friends that nothing was wrong. The fact that none of their friends, apart from Jack, knew or suspected that anything was wrong in the first place was neither here nor there.

  The first person Ann opened the door to was Jack.

  ‘Point me at the pussy. Oops. Oh God, fled already, has it?’

  ‘You’re early, Jack. Graham isn’t even ready yet.’

  ‘Shit, so I am. Bought this digital watch, you see. Couldn’t understand the twenty-four hour system. Only took off ten. Started standing people up by two hours. Now I’m over-compensating. Take off fourteen instead.’ Jack put on a that-sounds-unconvincing expression. He looked and sounded nervous. ‘Actually, I thought I’d come and see everything was all right. What’s it about anyway?’

  ‘Oh, wedding anniversary.’

  ‘Bloody good.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mmmm, but it wasn’t, was it?’

  ‘ …?’

  ‘I mean, I was there.’

  ‘Christ, Jack—the first person I try it on … sorry, love.’

  ‘More rewriting history, eh?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t blab. What’s the crumpet factor?’

  ‘Don’t you ever ease up, Jack?’

  ‘Always trying to ease up. Ease up who’s the question.’

  ‘Maybe you should be a bit discreet this evening.’

  ‘Ah, catch the drift. Still, have to seem natural, don’t I?’

  ‘You could start by opening some wine.’

  ‘Roger, wilco, sab.’ Jack seemed very ill at ease for once. Normally, you could rely on him to be himself. His ebullience might fluctuate, but he was always reliably self-obsessed. That was why he was so useful socially. He made other people feel at ease by knowing they didn’t have to talk about themselves unless they really wanted to.

  Jack’s way of opening wine was manly and combative. He wouldn’t use openers which relied on air-injection systems; he called them chicks’ bicycle-pumps. He wouldn’t use wooden contraptions which fitted over the neck of the bottle and offered a choice of handles to turn. He would not even use a simple waiter’s corkscrew: the idea of a lever and a two-pull technique struck him as cissy. All he would contemplate was a simple, old-fashioned, wooden-handled corkscrew.

  The performance was a three-part ritual. One: corkscrew inserted at waist height on a table or sideboard. Two: bottle picked up, held only by the corkscrew, and lowered in a smooth swoop to a position between the feet. Three: feet clamped round the base of the bottle, left hand holding the neck, then the cork pulled in a long, single stroke as if starting a motor mower; as the right arm came up with its prize, so, in parallel but belated motion, the left arm came up with the bottle, which was smoothly returned to its original surface. The performance, Jack believed, was one in which natural strength was subdued into elegant line.

  He opened the first six bottles by himself, in the kitchen. Graham walked in as he was removing the foil from the neck of the seventh. His trick with foil was to take it off in one long strip, like apple peel.

  ‘Just in time,’ he bellowed at Graham, and went straight into his three-part act. As he drew the cork, the natural pop was followed by what Graham thought at first might be an echo. But Jack was smiling to himself and gazing at the wine; he muttered,

  ‘It’s an ill wind … ’

  Graham wondered if he ever farted for women. You couldn’t very well ask. You couldn’t ask the women, because you couldn’t; and you couldn’t ask Jack because it was too late now, because the joke for him, and whatever there was of it for you, somehow depended on its inwardness, on its being not heard but overheard. The nearest you came to acknowledgment was to murmur, as Graham did now,

  ‘Bless you.’

  Jack smiled again; he was beginning to feel more at ease.

  Nobody arrived for twenty minutes, and the three of them sat in the sitting-room while it swelled to the size of a hangar; then, as if suddenly released from a traffic-jam, half the guests came together. There were coats to be laid tenderly on beds, and drinks to get, and introductions to make while the guests’ eyes searched anxiously for ashtrays and ashtray lookalikes. And after half an hour the party began to run itself; people started to treat the hosts as guests, filling their glasses and offering to fetch them food.

  Ann enlisted Jack’s help in forcing the guests to mix; Graham pottered around with a wine bottle in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other; and the noise level rose in its usual baffling way—not because more people had arrived, but in a self-willed, uncontrollable spiral.

  Jack, of course, was normally at the head of these sound spirals. He was standing about eight feet away, engaging the attention of two of the plainest models Ann had been able to lay her hands on: chunky girls who specialized in showing county tweeds and trench-coats. But all models are chameleons, and somehow they had managed to make themselves look slim and debby. Jack, in mid-act, caught Ann’s eye on him and winked. One of the debby girls turned; Ann nodded and smiled, but didn’t come across.

  Jack was smoking a cigar. ‘Have a nun’s dildo,’ he would normally chortle, taking out a pack of panatellas. Ann doubted if he’d used that line yet, though he had always assured her that the posher the girl, the dirtier you should talk. It was interesting—and well-judged—that he was smoking a cigar. The cigarette trick, he must have decided, was not the right approach for these girls; something more autocratic was called for. And the funny thing was, Jack looked just as plausible with a cigar as he did with a cigarette. His image readjusted itself without any difficulty.

  Ann’s refill route gradually took her nearer Jack and the two models. As she approached she heard him preparing for one of his favourite lines.

  ‘… but a good cigar is a smoke. Still, that’s only Kipling. Do you like Kipling? Don’t know, never been kippled; I understand. No, the thing about cigars and women, Kipling got it all wrong, didn’t he?’ (the questions were always rhetorical) ‘the thing about that is, really, well, Freud, isn’t it?’

  The models looked at one another.

  ‘You know what Freud said on the subject?’

  They didn’t. Freud meant a few basic things to them: snakes, and everything being really about sex, and other things they didn’t want to think about: things about your bottom, they suspected. They giggled a little in anticipation, and waited on Jack. He rocked on his heels, put a thumb in the pocket of his leather waistcoat, waggled his cigar suggestively up and down, then took a long, roguish puff.

  ‘Freud said,’ and he paused again, ‘ “Sometimes a cigar … is only a cigar.” ’

  The models whinnied in a mixture of amusement and relief, pushing the noise
spiral still higher. Ann moved across to join them, and Jack patted her welcomingly on the bottom.

  ‘Welcome, my lovely,’ he roared, though he was standing right next to her; indeed his arm was now round her shoulder. Ann turned her head towards him and made to whisper. He felt the turn through his arm, caught the head-movement from the corner of his eye, deduced that he was being offered a kiss, and twisted into it with a horizontal swoop. Ann succeeded at the last moment in avoiding his lips, but still received a severe graze of cigar-fumed beard across her cheek.

  ‘Jack,’ she whispered, ‘I think the arm is a bad idea.’ The models, while unable to hear her request, noticed how quickly Jack dropped his arm; it was almost a parody of parade-ground smartness.

  ‘Thing about Freud is …’ Ann smiled her departure. Jack was going into one of his prepared speeches about how Freud’s interpretations of dreams were either obvious (‘Woman walks up Krautstrasse, buys herself a black hat; the old buffoon charges her 5,000 krone to tell her she wants her husband to be dead’) or unverifiably fantastic; how the cure rate for those who went to shrinks was no higher than for those who went on being crackers by themselves; how, in terms of the science of understanding people, the novelist’s methods were much older and more sophisticated; how anyone who wanted to lie down on his couch for an hour or two and give him free material was welcome; how they could play whatever role, or whatever game, they liked; how his favourite game (a puckish wink would be thrown in here) was Strip Jack Naked …

  Ann refilled some glasses, stirred up a stagnant area in the corner of the room, and looked around for Graham. She couldn’t see him in the sitting-room, so went through into the kitchen. There was a tramp raiding the refrigerator. At second glance, it was only Bailey, the gerontologist colleague of Graham’s, who, despite private wealth, always tried to look as shabby as possible, and usually succeeded. He kept his raincoat on, even in the house; his lank hair might have been whitish if it hadn’t been filthy.

  ‘Thought I might fry up some offal,’ he said, with a property-is-theft glance into the fridge.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ said Ann superfluously. ‘Seen Graham?’

  Bailey merely shook his head and carried on unwrapping polythene bags.

  Probably having a pee. She gave him a couple of minutes; then another couple, in case there was a queue. Then she went up to his study, knocked gently, and turned the knob. The room was dark. She went inside, and waited until her eyes adjusted themselves. No, he wasn’t hiding. Casually, she looked down into the garden, the nearer part of which was lit from the sitting-room’s french windows. At the bottom end, in the darkest part, Graham was sitting on the rockery, staring back towards the house.

  She went quickly downstairs and drew the sitting-room curtains. Then she returned to the kitchen, where Bailey, fork in hand, was spearing half-cooked pieces of chicken liver out of the frying pan. She seized a plate, tipped the contents of the pan on to it, thrust it into his hand, and pushed the pseudo-derelict towards the sitting-room. ‘Circulate, Mr Bailey,’ she demanded.

  Then she walked through the kitchen and out of the side door. When she reached Graham he was sitting on a large stone, his left shoe crushing some aubretia; clamped between his feet was a half-empty bottle of Haig. He was frowning vaguely towards the now-curtained french windows. From here, the peaks and troughs of party noise were flattened into a steady medium band of sound.

  Ann felt sorry for Graham, and also more irritated than ever before. The conflict resolved itself into a middle, professional tone.

  ‘Graham, is anything the matter? Or are you just drunk?’

  He avoided her eye, and didn’t reply immediately. Sometimes, he felt, this was all life consisted of: wives asking you aggrieved questions. Fifteen years of it with Barbara. When he met Ann, he thought all that was over. Now it seemed to be starting up again. Why couldn’t he be left in peace?

  ‘Drunk yes,’ he finally said. ‘Just drunk no. Matter.’

  ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘Ah. Matter. Matter is seeing wife kissing friend. Matter matter. Seeing best friend stroking wife’s … behind. Matter matter.’

  So that was it. Where had he been standing? But in any case, why the hell shouldn’t she let Jack Lupton kiss her at a party? With difficulty she maintained her nurse-like tone.

  ‘Graham, I kissed Jack because I was pleased to see him and he’d been doing his best to make the party go well, which is more than I can say for you at the moment. He put his arm round me because, because he’s Jack. I left him with Deanna and Joanie, and he was doing very well for himself.’

  ‘Ah. Sorry. Sorry. My fault. Didn’t help at party enough. Jack helps. Jack gets to pat wife’s bottom for helping. Must be more helpful. Good old Jack, jolly old Jack. Matter?’ he addressed the Haig bottle, ‘No matter. Matter gone away. Wife kisses helper. Matter gone. All gone.’

  Ann wasn’t sure she could keep her temper. She picked up the Haig and walked back towards the house, emptying it over the lawn as she went. She closed the back door and locked it. She reappeared in the sitting-room with a bottle of wine in each hand, by way of explaining her absence. She mentioned here and there that Graham had overdone the drink and was sleeping it off upstairs. The news spread gradually, and with a few muted smiles people began to leave. Jack, having made a late push to separate Deanna and Joanie, left with both of them.

  There were only three guests remaining when Graham attacked the french window with a garden fork. The tines slipped at first and glanced off the pane, so he reversed his hold and smashed the glass with the handle. Then he methodically chipped away the loose shards until there was a hole large enough for him to stoop through. He threw the fork up the lawn like a javelin—it stuck, held, swivelled, and flopped flat—then, pushing the curtain ahead of him, climbed back into his house. As he disentangled himself and blinked at the light, he saw in front of him his wife, his colleague Bailey, and a young couple whom he couldn’t remember meeting. The man had a bottle aloft in expectation of a crazed burglar. It was a full bottle.

  ‘Careful. Two twenty-five, that stuff. Use the white if you have to.’ Then he walked unsteadily to an armchair and sat down. It occurred to him that he probably ought to explain his behaviour. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Locked out. Sorry. Sorry. Didn’t have my key.’

  Ann shepherded the guests to the front door. Overwork. Worried about the party. Too much to drink. Daughter not been well (she invented that). On the pavement Bailey turned, looked very carefully at her, and announced, as if it were an episcopal blessing,

  ‘Never mix, never worry.’

  ‘That’s a wise thought, Mr Bailey. I’ll pass it on.’

  She went back inside, fetched some Sellotape and newspapers, and patched over the window. Then she poured herself a lot of whisky. She sat in a chair opposite Graham and took a large swig. He seemed quiet and almost sober. Maybe he was acting a bit when he came through the window—making it slightly better for her by pretending to be more drunk than he was. A strange considerateness, if so.

  How odd life’s causes and effects were, she thought. Jack pats my bum and Graham throws a garden fork through the french window. What sort of logical response to anything was that? Or the bigger connection: years ago I had a normally nice time enjoying myself, and because of it my normally nice husband, whom I didn’t even know then, is going crackers.

  She tried to remember that Graham was essentially nice. All her friends agreed, especially her women friends. He was gentle; he was clever; he didn’t strut and preen and bully in the way that many of his sex did. That’s what her friends had said, and Ann would delightedly have agreed with them. Until now. Gradually, Graham had stopped seeming as different from other men as he once had. She didn’t feel he was interested in her any more. He’d turned into a man like other men: lovingly surprised at his own emotions, while diminishing those of his partner. He’d reverted.

  And how remorselessly he’d managed to move himself to the centre of
the stage. She knew about the tyranny of the weak: that had been one of her first discoveries about relationships. She’d also discovered, slowly, about the tyranny of the nice: how the virtuous screw their allegiance out of the vicious. Now Graham was teaching her a new one: the tyranny of the passive. That was what he was exercising; and she’d bloody had enough.

  ‘Graham,’ she said, addressing him for the first time since he’d come through the window, ‘have you ever been to a brothel?’

  He looked across at her. What could she mean? Of course he hadn’t been to a brothel. Even the word had a fusty smell to it. He hadn’t heard it for years. It took him back to his student days, when he and his friends—virgins every one of them—used to bid each other public goodnight with a cheery ‘See you down the brothel’. To which you shouted back, ‘Maisie’s or Daisy’s?’

  “Of course I haven’t.”

  ‘Well, do you know what they used to do in brothels? I read it somewhere.’ Ann took another swig of her drink; she felt a flicker of something approaching sadism as she prolonged the introduction. Graham didn’t reply; he shifted his glasses sideways and waited.

  ‘Well, in brothels, what they used to do—I only asked you in case they still did it and you might know—was, sometimes, with the younger girls, they used to make a little bag of blood. Chicken’s blood, I think it was, usually, though I shouldn’t think it mattered. More important, the bag had to be made out of some very thin material. Nowadays, maybe they use polythene. No, I don’t suppose they would. I mean, polythene’s actually quite tough, isn’t it?’