My Secret History (54 page)

Keep this mission secret until the moment of action, I said to myself, and I laughed at my own words.

Then it was eight or so, and I was drenched. The lights were blazing in Greville Lodge. I mounted the steps, smiling, and reminded myself not to smile.

The bell chimed inside, and the door was opened by a woman in a white blouse and black skirt.

“Telegram for Mr. Wilkie,” I said. “I need his signature.”

I had first taken this woman to be Wilkie’s wife, but when she said softly, “Just a moment, sir. I’ll tell him you’re here,” I realized she was a servant.

Stepping softly on the long carpet, I followed her down the hall and into the dining room. It was not until I entered this lovely house that it struck me how ugly I looked. I caught sight of my raw wet face and wild hair in the mirror.

“Something about a telegram—”

The woman twitched when she saw I was just behind her.

Wilkie stood up. He was small and angry, and his size, and the way his standing up hardly mattered, gave him a peculiar fury.

“Who are you?” he said.

The room was warm, and fragrant with food; another mirror, and bright lights and pictures. Eight of them were seated around the table—Slee at the far end. He looked almost amused. He did not recognize me. I knew he was thinking: Wilkie’s got a problem. I watched him as I spoke.

“Message for a man named Slee,” I said.

His face went smooth and bright with anxiety. He started to stand up. There was a twitch in his cheek.

“Sit down,” I said, and drew a pistol out of my pocket.

One woman breathed hard in a pumping motion, nodding and moving her shoulders, and another screamed like a cat. The men were petrified and silent—afraid to do anything because they would reveal the extent of their fear. And the thing was a water pistol I had taken from Jack’s toy box. I held it half inside my sleeve. Just an hour before, in the rain, I had pissed into it, dribbling into the small hole.

I said, “I don’t want to use it, so don’t make me.”

Wilkie was fussing, but more carefully now. He was saying, “See here. If this is a robbery—”

“Shut up,” I said.

I loved the frightened way he backed up and made his mouth square.

“This isn’t a robbery,” I said. “I’m Andre Parent—”

Someone whispered, “Jenny’s husband.”

“And that man, Slee,” I said, pointing with my pistol and making him wince, “has been fucking my wife!”

“That’s rubbish!” Slee said, speaking to a woman across the table, obviously his companion, possibly fiancée.

“While I was away,” I said. I was dripping on the food, my sleeve over the table. I liked the suspense, the way they listened and gave me room. “This bastard came to my house. Messed around with my son, and got into bed with my wife. Yes, you did.”

Wilkie was staring at Slee.

I said, “That’s unprofessional, you slimy fucker.”

“Please calm yourself, Mr. Parent,” Wilkie said. “I can take care of this. Come to my office. We can discuss—”

“Shut up,” I said.

A woman started to cry and so I skipped the rest of my speech and said, “I’ve got a message for you.” I took a piece of paper out of my pocket.

I hated the way Slee glared at me. I guessed he was thinking,
I’ll get you
.

With my coat steaming and my hair over my eyes and water dripping from my elbows I read the paper.

“ ‘I would like to say in the nicest possible way that I love you in the nicest possible way.’ ”

Slee’s face hardened.

“You wrote that to my wife.”

He said, “What if I did?”

Surprised by his arrogance, I menaced him with the pistol, making him squirm. I said, “Take it,” and handed him the wet paper.

He took it in his fingers like a turd.

“Those are your words on that paper,” I said.

He pinched the paper but said nothing.

“Eat it,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

“I’ll shoot!” I moved nearer him and my big wet sleeve trembled near his face. “Now stick it into your mouth and make it snappy.”

The heavily breathing woman was whimpering, trying to contain her sobs; but they burst through her nose.

Slee put the paper on his tongue and closed his mouth on it.

“Swallow it.”

He hesitated. I jerked the pistol again to startle him. His mouth moved and from the effort of it tears came to his eyes.

“If you go near my wife again, you fucker, I’ll kill you.”

He looked as though he was going to vomit. The others, perhaps realizing they were safe—that my quarrel was with Slee—were very quiet and attentive, except for the whimpering woman. All their worry about my intrusion had changed into a sort of resentment directed against Slee.

He stood up slowly, as I backed towards the door. It was the feeblest show of defiance.

“Sit down,” I said.

I could tell his teeth were locked together.

I took a step towards him and said, “You’re dead, asshole,” and squirted my pistol at him. “You’re history.”

“My eyes!” he shrieked—the suddenness of it alarmed me. He put his hands over his face. But before he could recover and chase me I ran out of the room, I heard someone say, “Is it acid?” I slammed the dining room door so hard the wall shook and there was a series of crashes, like china plates or vases, or perhaps large framed pictures, dislodged and hitting the floor.

I fled into the rain, laughing.

Sunday we went to Richmond Park and looked at the deer, and had tea in a drafty old building on the west side of the park. Jenny said, “On my way to the loo I saw a sign saying Bertrand Russell grew up here.”

Jack said, “Who’s Bertrand Russell?”

“A famous man, who was very clever,” Jenny said.

“He was a silly shit, with a filthy mind, who hated Americans,” I said.

“Daddy said ‘shit,’ ” Jack said, trembling with excitement. His lip curled and he said, “Shit!”

On Monday, as Jenny was putting on her coat, I told her I had been to Sevenoaks. I wanted to prepare her.

“I’ve taken care of your friend Slee.”

Leaving out the wild hair, the wet raincoat, and the water pistol filled with urine, I told her what I had done. “Made a fuss” was the expression I used. I did not say that I had ordered him to eat the message, though as I was telling her in euphemisms of the encounter I kept seeing his tears as he choked on the piece of paper, like a young child being forced to eat cold oatmeal.

“Oh, God,” she said, hesitating at the door. “Oh, God. You didn’t. You fool. How could you?”

For a moment I thought she had decided not to go to work. She looked sick, she looked terrified. The craziness of it came to me as I saw her face.

She said, “This had better not be as bad as you make it sound.”

I knew it was worse. I had left all the bad parts out. But I was counting on their summary, and expected them to exclude the details: dripping on the table, yelling at Wilkie, saying “fucker,” and squirting piss in Slee’s eyes, not to mention making him chew and swallow the paper.

Just the way she slammed the door when she got home told me that it was going to be a long night. She did not say a word to me until Jack was in bed. We had taken turns reading him his current favorite,
Ant and Bee and the Rainbow
, how they created the colors. I lay in the darkness reading, and dreading what was to come.

“Are you out of your mind?” she said.

Fury had given her a different face. She had stiff unpleasant features and hateful eyes. Her skin was the color of cement. She loathed me.

“Are you crazy?” she said. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

All these questions; and there were more.

“What are you playing at? Do you want to get me fired? What’s your problem?”

She then told me what I had done. It was a surprisingly accurate version of my caper at Greville Lodge—conning the maid, bursting in, interrupting the dinner, snapping at Wilkie, swearing, making Slee eat the paper, frightening everyone with the gun. The gun was the worst of it: the English hatred of firearms, their horror of all weapons as instruments of intimidation.

She told it meaning to shame me, but as she spoke it all came back to me and seemed wonderful. Remembering it, I smiled.

“It was a water pistol,” I said.

“He thinks you might have damaged his eyes. There were chemicals in it.”

“Piss,” I said.

“You’re sick,” she said, disgustedly.

“He deserved it. He deserved much worse than that. He was lucky.”

“It wasn’t only him, you know. You ruined their dinner party—you ruined their whole weekend.”

“If I’d had a real gun I would have shot him,” I said. I remembered the Mossberg I used to own when I was fifteen. I pictured Slee’s look of terror as I threatened him with it, and the way he wilted and bled as I shot him. “I will shoot him.”

“Wilkie thinks you should see a doctor. I was in his office an hour. He was so humiliated—and you can just imagine how I felt. He kept telling me that he would have gone to the police if it hadn’t been for Terry—”

“Stop calling him Terry!”

“I’ll call him anything I like. You should thank him. He persuaded Wilkie not to press charges.”

“What charges? Making him eat a piece of paper? Is that a criminal offense? Hah! I’d love to see him in court.”

I saw him saying,
Then he made me put the paper into my mouth, Your Honor
, while people in the public gallery laughed.

“You terrorized those people,” Jenny said. “You broke some valuable china. Mrs. Wilkie was hysterical. Oh, God, you’re pathetic. You think this is funny.”

When she said that I remembered the moment of squirting Slee, and the way he had put his hands over his face, and I laughed, thinking
My eyes!

“You’re mad because I forced him to eat a piece of paper. Hey, it was his own piece of paper! It was funny. I’d do it again. I’d make him eat more.”

“I’m not cross about that,” she said. “I know your pride was hurt. I didn’t realize you’d take it so badly.” She had become very rational, but was still angry. I hated her in her logical moods, because she was intelligent, and I could only get the better of her when she lost her temper. “What I object to is your making a mess of things—ruining the weekend. And especially all that talk. You can’t keep your mouth shut, can you? Now everyone in the bank knows.”

It seemed to me appropriate that she should have to face them. She had wanted to hide and be blameless.

“You brought it on yourself,” I said. “If you hadn’t fucked the guy this would never have happened.”

“I told you I was sorry,” she said. “I told you that I still loved you, that I was glad you’re back, and that I wanted our life to
continue as normal.” She had been looking at her hands; now she raised her head and looked me in the face. “But that wasn’t good enough for you.”

It wasn’t: true. I needed the triumph of humiliating that man. Now we could continue.

I said, “We’ll be all right.”

“No,” she said. “You’ve spoiled it. You’ve put me in a horrible position. I can’t forgive you for that.”

“That’s right—stick up for that asshole. He didn’t put me in a horrible position. Don’t think about me.” But sarcasm didn’t help, and I could not keep myself from adding, “I’ll shoot him!”

“You’ve made my job practically impossible,” she said. The hatred in her voice hurt me, because the voice itself sounded so logical. “I have no respect for you.”

She was pale, and had the thin starved look that always emerged in her when she was infuriated. But there were no tears. No matter what I said she would not lose her temper.

“You’d better find another place to sleep.”

“This is my house!”

“Then find another room,” she said coolly, “because I don’t want you in my bed.”

My study had no heat, but it had a sofa, and there I slept that night, snoring under my overcoat and still wearing my socks, like an alienated madman in a Russian novel.

The next day, waking alone in the cold room, I had the impression that I was still in Siberia, sniffing the frozen dusty air of Khabarovsk; that I was somehow marooned, and that something terrible was about to happen.

I lay there in the darkness, clutching my coat, at first frightened and depressed by these Siberian impressions, but at last reassured when I saw the glint at the window. The bright winter morning in London had cast a frosty white shine across my desk, my typewriter, my papers, and the stack of thick notebooks I had brought back from my trip.

I did not dare to open them then, but after I had dropped Jack at school I went upstairs, into the cold room, and began reading. I realized only then how much I had written down. I had written everything, and because I had done that I had forgotten it all. The notebooks surprised me in their detail: skies, food, trains,
faces, smells, clothes, weather; and they were full of talk. It was exact talk, scribbled first on pieces of paper and then written faithfully as dialogue.

I turned pages, skipping until my eye lighted on the description of an Indian civil servant on the train to Simla, the dark circles under his eyes, the unsmiling mouth and brown suit. He was telling me of an incident in Bengal, where he had been an accountant; of a man who had threatened him.
“I’ll charge-sheet you,” I said, and I fetched the blighter a kick—

I laughed out loud. Then I stopped, hearing the echo of the strange sound. For a moment in my reading I had been transported, and I had forgotten everything—all my worry and depression, the crisis in my marriage, my anger, my jealousy. I had seen the Indian sitting across the aisle from me in the wooden carriage, and the terraced fields on the steep slopes, and the way the train brushed the long-stemmed wild flowers that grew beside the track.

It was half a world away, and because it was so separate from me, and yet so complete, I laughed. It was a truthful glimpse of a different scene. It cheered me up. It was like looking at a brilliant picture and losing myself in it.

And I knew my own laugh. I had laughed in the grounds of Greville Lodge—that was a worrying whickering laugh. And I had laughed last night at Jenny when I remembered squirting Slee with the pistol. That had been wilder, with a victimizing howl in it. But this was like a shout of health, like a foreign word that meant “Yes!”