Millicent was sitting with her head in her hands, tiny against the vast communal table. I sat down beside her; it seemed at first as if she hadn’t seen me, as if she were somewhere very private; then she sat up, looked me in the eye, and began to speak.
‘I need you to understand that I have never and never would betray you, Alex.’
She hadn’t slept. I could see the blood pulsing in her neck, smell the sourness on her breath.
‘So I probably need to start with the really bad stuff, and then I can explain – and I hope, I really hope you’re going to listen and to understand – how it isn’t what it looks like. Because I know it doesn’t look so good.’
She reached into her bag and produced a small white envelope; she looked at it for a moment, then handed it to me.
‘So this is what the police wanted to discuss with me.’
Inside was a single photograph. An elegant metal band, very thin at the bottom, slightly thicker on the top. Soft white gold. A line of three square-cut sapphires. My grandmother’s bracelet. My mother had given it to Millicent to welcome her to the family. It was so small that my mother could barely wear it, but was a perfect fit for Millicent’s left wrist. On the inside of the clasp I had had it engraved. MW.
Millicent Weitzman.
My wife.
‘Alex, they found it in his bedroom.’ The tiny safety chain was broken.
‘His bedroom?’
‘This is the bit I can’t explain. The weird thing, not the bad thing. They found it between the wall and the headboard, on the floor.’
‘Between the wall and the headboard?’
‘That’s what they said.’
‘OK …’
I could think of nothing else to do, so I drank coffee. It was tepid, must have been standing for some time.
‘Alex, I was never in his bedroom.’
‘But you were in his house? Is that what you’re telling me?’
Millicent looked past me and over my shoulder. I followed her gaze and realised I must have spoken more sharply than I’d thought. A tall Swedish girl was staring at us from behind the coffee machine. She looked away, and Millicent and I looked back towards each other.
‘Christ, Millicent, what’s going on?’
‘Nothing, Alex. Please believe that.’
‘Right. Can’t be. Of course. He’s dead now.’
‘Sure. I probably deserve that, Alex.’
She was going to cry. That small-child voice. The redness of her eyes.
She swallowed hard. Pinched the bridge of her nose. Breathed out purposefully. Perhaps she wasn’t going to cry.
‘I lied to you. That’s the way you’re going to interpret it, and I guess it’s a reasonable interpretation. It
is
a lie of omission; I didn’t tell you.’
‘Didn’t tell me what?’
‘That I knew Bryce.’
‘I thought Bryce was his last name?’
Millicent gave a tiny flinch.
‘You called him by his last name? Stylish.’
‘I didn’t betray you, Alex.’ She was looking at me very directly now. I held her gaze, trying to find the lie.
‘There was no sex. Just so that thought has been spoken. But I did know him. Better than I said.’
‘Do you mean there was
no sex
in the American understanding of the term? You know, the Bill Clinton defence?’
‘I mean there was no sex of any sort.’
‘So we’re talking British no sex. Just to be clear, in this country that does preclude oral.’
‘I really hope you can understand that this is not what it looks like.’
‘Funny, Millicent, because it still looks to me like what it looks like.’
‘You have a right to be angry, Alex.’
‘Who says I’m angry?’
‘OK,’ she said, uncertain.
‘I’m not angry.’
‘Most people would be in this situation, Alex.’
‘Oh, so now you’re some sort of objective voice. Instead of a wife admitting to sleeping with the next-door neighbour.’
‘I did not admit to sleeping with him.’
‘No. No, you didn’t admit to that.’ I looked around, felt eyes on me from behind the coffee machine, and for a moment caught the gaze of the Swedish girl. I tried to smile, but she looked away.
‘Don’t try to enlist help, Alex. We have to deal with this as a couple.’
‘I’m enlisting help? Because I smiled at that pretty Swedish girl?’
‘Yeah. You played that one to the gallery.’
I was shaking now. I kept my voice as quiet as I could.
‘No, Millicent, I am not angry, and no, I am not trying to enlist help, and no, I was not playing to the fucking gallery. I just want to find out what you’ve done.’
‘OK, sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have said that. This isn’t easy for me.’
‘We’re talking about infidelity – your infidelity – and you accuse me of flirting with the girl who makes the coffee?’
I made to laugh, but it came out too much like a sigh. Millicent took my hand then, and there was something so wounded and so vulnerable about her gaze that I wanted to draw her towards me and comfort her, as if she were the wronged party. Her eyes flicked towards the coffee machine, then back towards me.
‘It’s only because she’s tall that she’s even in my line of sight,’ I said.
‘Tall, blonde, taut and twenty,’ she said. ‘The antithesis of me.’
‘How is twenty the opposite of thirty-five?’ I said.
‘So the rest of that you’re not arguing with? Mother
fuck
.’
The laughter froze on my lips. ‘Promise me on your life that you didn’t sleep with the neighbour,’ I was about to say, but the manager appeared at our side and quietly asked us if there was anything the matter. When I said no, and asked if he would mind leaving us to continue our discussion, he became very Swedish. He said that it was clear that our conversation was of a highly personal nature, that we were both highly emotional people, that this was obviously a matter about which we both felt strongly, and that once we had resolved the issue we would be welcome back any time.
At this point I became abusive. I told him that I would never again besmirch the clean white
bloody
linen of his
bloody
Swedish
bloody
cake shop.
That at least is how I remember the conversation: my use of language may have been less precise, and it’s possible I used a stronger word than bloody.
‘Great,’ said Millicent, as we began walking home.
‘What? It’s a cake shop.’
‘He did nothing wrong, Alex.’
‘And I did? Are you trying to tell me that getting us thrown out of a café in Crappy is, like,
real bad
? Or are you telling me that what you did is
real bad, y’all
. Because right now I’m a little confused, Millicent.’
‘
Y’all
is Texas, and it’s a plural form, and you’re being sophomoric. I’m going home. You can join me or not join me. Your choice.’
I watched her go, the anger of the righteous man coursing through me, dangerously electric. I looked down at my right hand, and saw that I’d been clenching it so tightly that the nail of my index finger had cut into the nail bed of the thumb. I brought the thumb to my mouth, and sucked at the welling blood. It too tasted electric, metallic: the air before a lightning storm.
A pair of young Somali girls walked past, staring at me, giggling. It was only when they’d gone that I realised what they’d seen: a grown man standing on the pavement sucking his thumb.
My mother called. This really wasn’t the time. I rejected the call and headed home.
Pride, I thought, that’s my cardinal vice; not wrath. Pride: the one sin from which all others stem. Oh, I could be the greedy man and the mean man, the envious and the enraged man, the licentious and the lazy man, but it all came down to pride; to the mortal sin of playing God, of being a complete arse, of standing in the street and passing judgment on my wife.
I married Millicent eight weeks after she moved in. A registry office, a few of my friends, and a wedding breakfast at the Rat and Pipe that flowed seamlessly into Bloody-Mary lunch and tequila supper. Neither of us had told our parents, though Millicent’s younger sister Arla flew in from San Diego, got spectacularly drunk, slept with a stranger at the Troy Club, and flew back again the next day.
‘Did that just happen?’ I asked, as we left Arla at Heathrow.
‘Like a bad version of me, right?’ said Millicent.
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Just don’t.’
So began our marriage of convenience.
For a time nothing changed. We ate, we smoked, we drank as lovers do. I would lick her to orgasm, slowly, timing the strokes of my tongue to her breathing. She would sit astride me until long after I had come, kissing and caressing me until I grew hard inside her again. We revelled in the carpet burns, the subtle bruisings, the twists and the strains that we casually inflicted upon each other. Edge of worktop, rim of bath, tiled floor and wood-chipped wall – all left their imprint upon her, upon me.
In cafés we compared our wounds: the grazes on her left wrist; on my right knee. In dark-lit restaurants she would draw my hand to her inner thigh, ask me if I could feel what she felt, that she was tender and abraded. In the aftermath of sex we found the precursor to sex. I liked her as I’d never liked anyone else.
‘You like me? You
like
me?’
‘I really,
really
like you.’
At this she became serious, almost formal. She took my hand and placed it in my lap.
‘No, no, I think it’s more than that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You love me, Alex. I actually think you love me.’
Her words lay heavy in the air: an accusation. I looked at her, made to speak, stopped myself.
‘What, Alex?’
‘Isn’t it for me to say that I love you?’
‘Well, by convention, yes, but you haven’t so far. And I really think you do. You can tell me you don’t, and then, of course, I won’t have to tell you that I love you, which would probably be easier for both of us. But you’re really very sweet to me, and although that doesn’t in itself mean anything, we kind of established that being sweet to women is really not in your nature.’
‘Therefore I love you.’
‘Would you please drop the word therefore?’
I lit a cigarette. Tried to think. Offered her the cigarette. She snatched it from me, angry now, dropped it into the ashtray.
‘You are so uptight. What’s so hard about saying it?’
‘Wait, please. Wait. Wait. Yes. You’re right. I am uptight.’
‘That’s it?’
‘And I do. I really do.’
‘Then say it.’
‘I thought I just did.’
She gave a little shake of the head. ‘No. You didn’t.’
‘You said something just now about having to say that you loved me. Do you?’
‘Love you? Yes. Yes, Alex, I really do love you. And it kind of scares me. Because I’m in your country, in your apartment – sorry, your
flat
– living on your terms, and pretty much on your money. The only friends I have here are your friends. I know no one my own age. I have nowhere to go if this screws up. Which of your friends is going to want me sleeping on their floors? Can you name just one person who’d want that? And I know you’ll think I’m being unfair but I kind of wish you’d said it first, because I’m in the weaker position here.’
‘I love you.’
‘Say it again.’
‘I love you, Millicent.’
She reached for my hand. ‘And now I feel stupid again. I should not have made you say it.’
‘Millicent. I love you.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Stop apologising.’
‘Kind of English, right? I fit right in …’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you. Are we good?’
‘We’re good.’
At first I saw no change in Millicent, nor in myself, but other people must have seen something shift. They began to invite us out as a couple, to the pub at first, but then to parties and to weekends away.
Those friends I hadn’t dropped seemed genuinely delighted when we celebrated our first anniversary with no sign of a break-up. My female friends began to make room for Millicent, to invite her to bars or to the cinema, to seek out her opinion of books. Slowly, over time, Millicent eased up. There were small changes to her wardrobe. Her breasts jutted a little less, her heels dropped slightly. She was still sharp, but the brittle quality she had had at the start was gone. I no longer had to carry her through London life, to police conversations for slurs on her age or her nationality. I didn’t have to defend her against a hostile world. Millicent got life in London, and it suited her.
I loved her all the more.
Millicent handed me a cup of coffee as I entered the kitchen. I put it down by the sink, and held her in my arms. She wrapped herself around me and we clung to each other, rocking gently back and forth.
‘I know you have more to tell me, Millicent.’
‘I need for you to believe that I would never betray you, Alex.’
‘I’m trying. I’m not finding it easy.’
‘I know. And I did a bad thing. But I hope when I’ve finished you will see that the worst thing I have done is not to tell you about that bad thing, and that I didn’t betray you. Can you let me get to the end of this?’
I took a half-step back, took her head in my hands, my palms on her cheeks, my fingers in her hair. I stared into her eyes, trying to find a sign of something – what? But she just looked strung out, a little sad.
I opened the back door and went out into the garden, sat on the patchy grass. Millicent came out with the coffee cups and sat down beside me. We drank our coffee, saying nothing, not daring to look at each other.
In the grass beside me a line of ants was dismembering a ladybird. The workers streamed back and forwards along a bare patch in the turf, carrying body parts to an unseen nest. I looked at the cigarette in my hand. My teenage self would have intervened, bringing death by fire. I flicked the ash from the cigarette, and brought the tip close to the stream of ants. It stopped. Ants stood, antennae and forelegs waving in the air, poised as if to attack. Then, perfectly synchronised, the flow of ants began again, making a small detour around the cigarette tip, paying it no mind.
My telephone rang. Work. I switched it off and put it back in my pocket.