They had been taken three years ago, but it felt like a lifetime. What had happened to them in the last three years? Where had the laughter and intimacy gone?
At three minutes past nine (of course Nobu accommodated the last-minute change—Joe Chambers is, after all, one of their best customers), Joe takes the steps, three at a time. He charges through the restaurant to the table at which he knows Alice is waiting and scoops her hair gently away from her neck, leaning down to kiss her cheek.
“Three minutes,” she warns, grateful that he did not make her wait tonight.
“I told you I wouldn’t be late,” he grins. “You look beautiful. I’m sorry. Happy anniversary.” And he places a small turquoise-blue box on the table in front of her.
“Yet another guilt present?” Alice jokes, as Joe stiffens.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean every time you’re late you bring me a present.”
“Not every time, darling.” He relaxes. “And this is our five-year anniversary.”
“Five years. Can you believe it?” Alice is playing with the white ribbon on the box, wondering whether tonight would be the night for another talk, whether tonight he might listen when she says she needs Joe to spend more time with her. But she knows it will probably descend into another argument, and tonight is their anniversary. Perhaps she will try to save it until tomorrow.
“The happiest years of my life,” Joe says, as he says every year on their anniversary, and Alice still doesn’t know whether he means it.
“Are they really?” she says tonight, putting the box down and staring at him. “Are these really the happiest years of your life?”
“Alice,” he warns with a sigh. “I’m not prepared to have that discussion tonight. I’m not going to sit here and talk about how unhappy you are with my hours because I can’t change that right now, and I’m not going to have an argument on our anniversary. Open the gift. Let’s just have some champagne and have a lovely evening.”
Alice unwraps the Tiffany box and opens it to reveal a small diamond heart on a long platinum chain.
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
“Here. Put it on.”
Alice leans her head forward obligingly and Joe slips it on, sitting back to admire his good taste and his beautiful wife. He is aware that he is not the only one, that these days Alice always garners admiring glances. He chose well. She is a good wife, and she makes him happy. She’s not as passive or as forgiving as he had once thought, and he could live without the rows that seem to be more and more frequent, but he doesn’t think many women would put up with him, and on the whole Alice is probably far less demanding than any of the others.
And look how beautiful she has become, how the Plain Jane has blossomed into this stylish, sophisticated creature. She is everything he has ever looked for, and he leans forward, taking her face gently in his hands as he says, “I love you.”
“I know,” she smiles.
“No. I really love you.”
“I really love you too.”
“I love you the most,” he smiles, for this is their game.
“No. I love you the most.”
“Okay,” he shrugs with a playful smile, and they both laugh and kiss, all animosity now forgotten.
They have a wonderful evening. The chef’s specials were, as always, delicious, the champagne warmed their hearts, and they have been both tender and playful. Alice is almost high with joy, for this is the Joe she fell in love with, this is the Joe she doesn’t often see anymore.
He has been charming and funny and flirtatious. Perhaps he has flirted with their waitress a little more than Alice is comfortable with, but she is used to his ways now, and pretends not to notice.
“Doesn’t it bother you,” Emily once said, “how he flirts with anything in a skirt?”
“Absolutely not,” Alice had lied. “He’s all mouth and no trousers. He’ll look but he won’t touch.” And although she knows this to be true, knows that he would never be unfaithful, that he is basically just an insecure little boy at heart who needs to be constantly reassured that women still find him attractive, she still finds it exasperating that he continues to flirt in her presence.
“What?” he says, shrugging. “Why are you giving me that look?”
“You know why.”
“I’m not flirting. God, Alice, you always think I flirt with everyone.”
“That’s because you do.”
“I’m just being charming.”
“Smarmy, more like.”
“Anyway. You’re the one I chose. You’re the one I’m married to.”
“Hmmm.” Alice raises an eyebrow. “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
The bill has been paid and Alice and Joe are just finishing their coffee. Joe’s hand is already stroking Alice’s thigh under the table, and they are smiling at each other, knowing what that means, knowing that tonight will not be an early night after all.
“Alice! Joe!” A piercing French accent rings out, and Joe’s hand leaps off Alice’s thigh as they both turn round to see Valerie and Martyn.
Alice doesn’t like Valerie. She has known her for some months now, has bumped into her at several charity events, and on each occasion Valerie has said they must have lunch, but of course neither one has phoned the other.
Truth be told, Alice is more than a little scared of Valerie. While Alice is aware she now looks the part, she also knows that, much like a little girl playing make-believe, she is pretending. Valerie, on the other hand, is the real McCoy. Originally from Geneva, Valerie was brought up in New York, and now flies between London, New York, and Paris. So polished she’s almost gleaming, and so hard you’d hurt yourself if you bumped into her, she is witty, caustic, and the current darling of the society pages.
She also flirts mercilessly with Joe every time she sees him, and the only small mercy is that—extraordinarily—Joe doesn’t flirt back. “She’s a ball-breaker,” he said, when Alice first mentioned her. “A scary woman. Not sure I like her.” Alice breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“Valerie.” Joe stands up, plants a kiss on each cheek, and shakes hands with Martyn, her current, and rather insignificant save for his small fortune, boyfriend.
“Alice!” Valerie bends down to kiss Alice, enveloping her in a cloud of Calèche. “You look so in love, the two of you, sitting here gazing into each other’s eyes. So romantic!”
“Do we?” Alice says brightly, thinking, Yes, see how happy we are? That will teach you not to flirt with my husband. “It’s our anniversary.”
“Oh, chérie, congratulations. How wonderful. How long?”
“Five years.” Alice continues to stake her claim.
“Mon Dieu! That’s practically a lifetime! My first marriage lasted nine months and that was long enough, thank you. Aren’t you getting bored?” Valerie turns to Joe and raises an eyebrow.
Joe looks nervous. “Bored? With my beautiful wife? Absolutely not.”
“But they say that variety is the spice of life,” she says lightly. “After five years”—she turns to look at Alice—“I’d be looking for a little variety.”
“We don’t need variety,” Alice smiles through gritted teeth. “We have each other. Come on Joe, love. Let’s go home.” A dramatic pause. “To bed.”
Valerie raises an eyebrow and smiles. “Enjoy yourselves, my darlings. And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
3
They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad
They may not mean to but they do
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you . . .
—Philip Larkin
Joe finishes buttoning his shirt and reaches for his tie, draped neatly over the back of a buttery toile armchair in the corner of the bedroom. He puts his tie around his neck and stands in the soft glow of the bedside lamp for a few seconds, gazing down at the figure in the bed, her back toward him, her head resting on her ar
m, looking exactly like a model for an Impressionist painting. How lovely she is, the light glancing off the curve of her hip, her hair fanned out on the Frette pillowcases.
He leans down with a regretful smile and plants a gentle kiss on her shoulder, at which she turns over and stretches, giving him a lazy smile.
“You have to leave already?”
“I do.”
She reaches a hand up and strokes his cheek. “When will I see you again?”
“Soon. I’ll call you.” He sighs, knowing that this has to end, that her appearance at the restaurant last night crossed the line of acceptable behavior, that although it might just be a game to her, it could cost him his marriage.
“And what if I call you first?” Valerie smiles, then slowly pushes herself up on to her knees, stretching her arms up around his neck, waiting to see his reaction.
“Valerie,” he warns, nervous now. “You know the score. Alice is my wife and I love her, I don’t want to hurt her and I’m not going to leave her.”
“I know, darling,” she purrs, because this is a game she has played many times before, and as much as she likes to tease her married lovers, she has no intention whatsoever of breaking up their marriages. She just likes to have fun, to push the limits, to see how far she can go. “This has nothing to do with your marriage, I know, I know.”
“No, Valerie,” he says gently, disentangling himself from her arms. He has to end this, nearly had heart failure last night when she turned up at Nobu, only three hours after he had left her bed, when he had told her where he was taking Alice for their anniversary.
In the beginning he would have found it flattering. Would have found the element of danger exhilarating and sexy as hell. But he’s been seeing Valerie for a while now, and although the sex is fantastic, the thrill of the chase has now well and truly gone, and the prospect of getting caught—particularly after last night—is far more worrying than exciting.
There are, after all, certain rules about playing away, certain expectations that each of you must have, and an implicit agreement that you will abide by these rules.
First, and most important, a mistress must conspire to protect your marriage, must understand that your marriage comes first, and that however much you profess to love your mistress, you will never leave your wife.
She must never acknowledge you publicly in anything other than a platonic way, must understand that arrangements are made to be broken and that your family will always come first.
She must wait for your phone call or phone you on your mobile phone, which will be switched off when you are with your family. If you are with your family when the phone rings, you will have a code, and she will understand and immediately say good-bye. She will never phone you at home, not even when the urge to hear your voice becomes unbearable, and she will make herself available whenever you wish to see her.
Joe knows the rules by heart, knew the rules long before he planned to play the game. He has been observing the rules since he was a tiny boy, too young even to understand the meaning of the word, but old enough to know that what his father was doing was somehow wrong, would hurt his mother, that he would have to shoulder the burden of secrecy to please his father and protect his mother.
We are all the product of our parenting, and Joe, although a kind man, a loving man, could not have turned out any other way.
Eric Chambers was twenty-seven when Joe was born in 1964. He had been married for a year to Ava, whose dark good looks always reminded people of Ava Gardner, after whom she was named. Eric had fallen in love with Ava after she repeatedly turned him down, rejected his advances, told him she was not interested.
She knew of his reputation, had seen him around town in his E-type Jag, always with a glamorous blonde in a headscarf and large black sunglasses at his side. Ava had known he would be a heartbreaker, that he had indeed broken the hearts of many of the girls she knew.
But Eric persisted. He was not used to being turned down, and her indifference only fanned the flames of his desire. For a while, just like his son, he thought he could be the perfect husband, thought that one woman would be enough.
For a while he thought he could look and not touch, appreciate the myriad of beautiful women around him, admire the miniskirts brushing their thighs, the sleek bobs brushing against sharp cheekbones, but once Ava’s pregnancy started to show, Eric found himself longing for the unfamiliar touch, the thrill of a new body, a new taste, a new smell.
He fought it as long as he could, but one brief dalliance before Joe was born became several during Joe’s first year, eventually becoming one permanent mistress, who was subject to change, plus a couple of one-night stands, should he be lucky enough to find them, the free love of the 1970s taking rather longer to hit Guildford.
It didn’t, however, take Eric long to realize that Joe was the perfect foil. “I’m just taking him out for a walk,” he would tell Ava, who would gratefully retire to her room for a break from the exhausting demands of motherhood. After bundling Joe up, Eric would put him in the carriage and walk him down the road to Betty’s house, where Joe would gurgle happily on the floor of the living room while Eric helped “Auntie Betty” in the other room.
After Auntie Betty there was Auntie Sandra. Then Auntie Sally, followed by Auntie Terry, Auntie Pat, and Auntie Barbara. Auntie Pat was Joe’s favorite. She’d scoop him up into a big hug, saying, “Whaddyaknowjoe?” had a color television set, and let him eat sherbet fizzes and drink pop while he watched Captain Scarlet.
All the aunties made a fuss of Joe, but by the time Auntie Barbara came along, Joe was refusing to cooperate. He didn’t need any more aunties, he had decided, and there was no point being nice to them because they never seemed to stick around for long anyway.
“I don’t want to go and see Auntie Barbara,” he’d said. “Why can’t we go and see Auntie Pat?” But of course he’d never say this in front of his mum, because Eric had already told him that he worked for the aunties on the quiet and that Mum wouldn’t be very happy about it, and he was only doing it to make a bit of extra money to buy nice things for Mum, so Joe mustn’t say anything.
Joe knew, even at five years old, that there was more to it than that. He knew that his father was somehow guilty, and hated the fact that he would buy him a treat on the way home to buy his silence. He hated that moment when they would both walk in the door, and his mother would give him a big kiss and ask whether he’d had a lovely time at the park, or the museum. He’d shrug and stay silent, and would go up to his room as quickly as possible to avoid any more questions.
“Good boy, Joe,” Eric would whisper as he ruffled his hair. “Who’s Daddy’s best boy?”
“I am,” Joe would mumble, unable to look his father in the eye.
The best times were when his father was away. Then it would just be Joe and his mum, and he could look after her and make her laugh, and make sure that she didn’t have to worry about anything. And best of all, he didn’t have to lie, although his father said it wasn’t lying, it just wasn’t telling the whole truth, and that was something entirely different.
His parents were married for thirty-one years, until the unthinkable happened. Ava left Eric for Brian, a man they had played bridge with, a man they had known for years, whose own wife had died of cancer a long time ago.
It came completely out of the blue. Joe was at the office when the phone rang and he heard a series of short, sharp sobs. For a man who had never seen his father cry, it was possibly the most shocking thing Joe had ever heard. “She’s gone,” his father kept repeating. “She’s gone. What am I going to do?”
“Of course I knew,” his mother said when Joe got hold of her later that day. “I’ve known for years about your father but I didn’t want to know, I pretended not to notice. I kept thinking that if I kept quiet he’d eventually give the women up, and I kept hoping that maybe it wasn’t true, but I’ve heard all the rumors, I know there’s no smoke without fire.”
“But he loves y
ou,” Joe pleaded, devastated that his mother had actually left, that the only security he had ever known could be shattered so quickly. “He’s devastated. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.”
“He’ll get over it,” she said sadly. “I love him but I can’t live with the lies anymore. I can’t live with the phone calls saying he’s just going to the pub, when I know he’s with another woman. I don’t want to live with him going into the other room and whispering when his stupid mobile phone rings. He’s nearly sixty, for heaven’s sake, and he’s still at it, and I’ve had enough.”
Ava had married Brian—a very nice, but very dull accountant—and Eric had finally got used to being on his own.
“You’ll be fine,” Joe had said to him in the beginning. “Think of what a wonderful time you’ll have now you’re a free man, think of all those women who are dying to meet a handsome man like you.”
But Eric hadn’t ever really been fine since Ava left. It had shocked him to the core, and it was only once she had gone that he realized not only how much he loved her, but how much he needed her.
Eventually he met Carol, a divorced woman in her mid-fifties, and they settled down together. Joe doesn’t spend enough time with either of them to know whether the aunties are still around, but he rather suspects they are. What leopard, after all, ever manages to change its spots?
Joe had sworn he wouldn’t do the same thing as his father. Even as a young boy he had vowed he wouldn’t have a series of aunties, wouldn’t hurt his wife like his father had hurt his mother, wouldn’t spend his entire married life lying to his partner.
But really. Did he ever have a choice?