I was sitting by his side so couldn’t look dead-on at him, but the way he said it made me want to laugh, because he sounded as if he were serious. ‘You’ll want to know why, I expect. Well, don’t you?’ he demanded, when I didn’t say anything.
‘Why should I? I’m not your wife.’
‘I see what you mean. But I’ll tell you, anyway. My wife and I married quite young, ten years ago to be accurate, and we were really in love, as you usually are when you’re young, and when you get married. I hated all women, and she hated all men, so we got on like a house on fire, as it were. We started buying our own house in Putney, because I was well thought of in my job. There was a touch of ground frost in her makeup, but we thawed it out after a while. She was passionate, which meant that she realized her frostiness but did her best to overcome it. At the same time, I was cursed by a certain incompetence, which this also righted as time went on. So we got to our state of married happiness not without difficulty, but we got there, and I see now that we were happy, because we never really talked about happiness but just let the years flow by.
‘But we were children, because we were inert enough to think that we never needed to do anything for each other. In a sense we were right: we could have lived in reciprocal blindness till old age, but I suppose it’s always better to leave childhood behind.
‘My wife made friends one day with a woman, when they were both borrowing books at the local library. I never knew what they had in common, but this other woman, as the friendship went on, was the sort who was very independent. She was married, but made a cult of being self-sufficient in her life — as far as she could. Her husband was a photographer who did freelance work for magazines, and his wife was also a sort of journalist. My wife was fascinated by her, there’s no doubt of that, because she also had big ideas about women’s status in the world, ideas which I’d encouraged, as long as they didn’t disturb me. This other woman was the epitome then of what my wife had always wanted to be, for she had everything: a house, a good husband, a child, a job that she enjoyed, even a lover. There seemed nothing left to want. In the next two years I even became friendly with the husband, but not to the extent that Beryl was friendly with his wife, for he seemed a bit of a queer to me. I thought it was good that they should like each other, though I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t see how this other woman in some way disturbed her. My wife would cite her in arguments, and hold up her life to let me know how dull and narrow her own was. Then this other woman gassed herself.
‘My wife had known that she was depressed and withdrawn, but she hadn’t expected this, even as a remote possibility. Later it became known that the husband had been having an affair with another woman, and that the wife had found out, but had not told him or anyone that she knew. In spite of her own lover, she couldn’t stand her husband doing that sort of thing, so she quietly did herself in. It was a terrible shock to my wife, who was haunted by her friend’s death for weeks, so that I really believe she even began to think of turning on the gas as well. Nothing in the world seemed secure to her any more. I did my best by way of comfort, but was pushed completely to one side. In her shock it even seemed as if she blamed me in some way for what had happened, thinking perhaps that if she’d never married me she wouldn’t have been so dependent on the views that her friend held so intensely, in which case she would have been more human and open to sympathy, and it might then have been possible to fathom that her friend was going to kill herself. She may have saved her, she thought, but she was too deeply involved in her friend’s principles, and too dependent on my love and support — though she claimed that this never meant very much to her. But there was more to it than that, and it was a few years before I was able to see the outcome of it. You never know where a thing begins, I know that, but I think I can see where it’s going to end.’
It was hot in the plane, and he wiped his forehead and cheeks. He spoke as if telling me about something that had happened to another person rather than to himself, smiling at whatever in his story disturbed him — which meant he had a faint smile of disgust or self-pity on his face most of the time. ‘I’m not going to’ complain for myself, or say I was full of perfect love and understanding. I’m sure I was in love with her, though she claims I wasn’t and never was. Our marriage came to seem like a negation of love. It was heavy with underground recrimination, as if we were both haunted and overshadowed by a new demonic force that hadn’t been there before — though maybe it had, but had taken all this time to brew itself up between us. But the lever of it had been the woman’s suicide, of that I have no doubt.’
I offered him a cigarette. He didn’t smoke, or wouldn’t. He only drank. So I lit one: ‘It was a pity though. Your wife must have had a rough time.’
His voice was caught in a laugh of irony: ‘She did. No doubt about that. I was sorry for her, and did my best about it. But nothing could be enough. She had to find her own cure, which meant trying to destroy me. It was the only thing she could do, but it was too much of a price for me to pay, though I was made to pay it. The method she chose was that age-old one of having an affair, of betraying me and letting me know that she was betraying me, and continuing it to the point of trying to drive me mad. The affair’s been going on for two years, though in that time she has grown more secretive about it because she has now become more deeply and seriously attached to the man she took up with. She ties me to her by saying how much she loves me, tells me she’s only ever loved me, and loves no one else no matter what she does or whatever happens. This saps my resolution to clear out, but I discovered that she was put up to this ploy by her boyfriend. She is a monster, but so am I. It is easy for her to deceive me because I am away from home so often. Why did I get such a job if I can’t trust my wife? We still live as man and wife, and make love often enough for us to seem so. But if the only way she could find to get over her friend’s vampire suicide was to morally destroy me, my price for recovering from this attempt is to kill her. I put the matter in a nutshell, though I hope I’m not boring you.’
We had food in front of us, and it gave me the energy to go on listening: ‘It’s fascinating.’
He tucked into this food remarkably well, considering the ideas he had for his wife’s future. I suppose a person always eats well before committing a murder, but not before killing himself — though I must admit that I still didn’t believe he was serious. ‘So when she grew more careful,’ he said, ‘I became more assiduous in finding out what she was up to. It’s cost me hundreds of pounds, which in other and happier times would have been better spent on repairs to the house, in having her shadowed by private detectives. Do you know how many men are necessary to follow one person? It’s a hell of a business. I only found out when I got a bill from one agency of over two hundred pounds. It takes three men to follow her. Maybe she suspects I’m having her watched and does a bit of evading. But I know exactly what she does and where she goes. So before leaving this time, after several days of vindictive skirmishes and one dreadful final quarrel, I got her to promise solemnly that she would give him up and not see him again, so that we could make a new start. All seemed set for a bright future — though at heart I didn’t believe it would work for a minute. We kissed tenderly when I left for my business trip. But I called at the detective agency in Soho on my way by taxi to the airport and gave them the usual details, paid them a good advance sum in cash, and told them that if they by any chance tailed her to her lover’s flat they were to telegraph the fact to my hotel in Lisbon. I made up my mind that if she went through with any more treachery, I would murder her. I would destroy her. She would perish.