‘Actually,’ I said, ‘you’ve never —’
I was about to observe that Rebecca had never asked me how I felt about having Hamish either, but by this time she had risen and was towering unexpectedly over me where I sat on the sofa. In her hand she held my large black-leather ring binder, into which I had the habit of writing every necessary or important piece of information that came my way, and which over a period of years had therefore come more or less to represent my brain. She raised her arm and dashed it violently to the floor. The binding snapped open and a blizzard of paper bloomed out into the air. For some seconds the dry, densely written pages snowed softly and heavily over every available surface.
‘I can’t believe you did that,’ I said.
Two or three weeks later she threw a heavy crystal fruit bowl at me, which hit the wall behind my head and separated instantly into a million little diamonds that sped purposefully away across the floor in different directions. We had to get Ali to come and take Hamish for a couple of hours while we found them all.
‘Come on, you guys,’ she said, on the doorstep. ‘You’re being really stupid. You’ve got to sort this out.’
‘No one else knows how despicable you are,’ said Rebecca, to me.
‘Everyone goes through these patches,’ said Ali. ‘Honestly, everyone does.’
‘You’re worse than the worst Nazi,’ said Rebecca, to me. ‘Hitler was better than you.’
‘What you guys really need,’ said Ali, ‘is to spend some more time together.’
‘If they knew what you were like they’d take me away from you,’ said Rebecca, to me.
‘Rick knows this sweet little hotel in Cornwall,’ said Ali, grabbing both our arms and squeezing them desperately. She put her face close to ours and spoke in an urgent voice. ‘Look, you just need to go to bed. You need to spend all day in bed. You need to work it out. All right? All right?’ she reiterated, squeezing harder.
‘All right,’ I said evenly. I was holding my breath. I felt that if Ali didn’t go soon my lungs would explode.
Rebecca bought a pair of boots that looked as though they had been commissioned to effect my particularly horrible murder. They were black and went up to her knees, and had heels like knitting needles. The toes were sharpened to a point that extended two or three inches out at the front. For a year she wore these boots nearly every day. She clicked menacingly off to the gallery, with her hair in curtains and a devious expression on her face. She mentioned a whole galaxy of men she met there; she charted for me, at length, their ever-changing positions in the heavens of her favour, where they stood governed by the sun of emotion and the moon of art. At length these stars receded back into their darkness, leaving Rebecca to the contemplation of a new artist Rick was selling, a man called Niven. He had only a single name, like a planet. It was Niven, I think, who introduced Rebecca to the concept of the big wheel. I believe I also have him to thank for the discreet retirement of the black boots. Niven admired only what was natural. He was often to be found in Rick and Ali’s kitchen, his long, attenuated body, from which a voice of unexpected power and solidity issued like the proboscis of a predatory insect, draped over two or more chairs, pouring wine down his tanned and prominent gullet. Niven had a large, roughly made head and a massive, meaty chin and a nimbus of thin, curly, brown hair. His eyes were like a pair of small shallow puddles. Ali claimed to find him irresistibly attractive.
‘He’s such a shit,’ she said. ‘I always go for the shits, don’t I, darling?’
‘You’re too much like hard work for Niven, darling,’ said Rick. ‘He says he wants a handmaiden.’
‘A handmaiden?’ said Rebecca. Her tone was very sour. ‘What does that mean?’
‘A helpmeet,’ said Rick. ‘A slave to his talent.’
‘He’d be better off finding someone with some money,’ said Rebecca. ‘Or some connections.’
I rolled my eyes. This sort of comment had, apparently overnight, become Rebecca’s speciality.
‘Now how did he express it?’ said Rick. ‘I think he said, “I put in the fuel, I get to drive the car.”’
‘God, I bet he’s a fantastic lay,’ said Ali dramatically. ‘Don’t you think, Becca?’
‘For Christ’s sake, listen to you,’ said Rebecca. ‘You’re such a fake. You’re such a sad old woman.’
‘That’s really unfair,’ wailed Ali. ‘You don’t know what it’s like being married to Rick! He’s got all these gorgeous young female artists just throwing themselves at him to get space in the gallery.’ She leaned forward confidentially, though Rick had wandered upstairs by now. ‘He told me that the other day this really beautiful girl came in and sat on his desk and said, you know, what do I have to do? What do I have to do to get in here?’
I snorted with laughter. Ali and Rick always tried each to promote the attractiveness of the other, as though it were a consignment of something they needed to get off their hands before the market crashed. In fact Ali was by far the better looking of the two. Rick was perfectly charismatic, but it was hard to imagine anyone flinging themselves at him, even for the sake of career advancement.
‘It’s not funny,’ said Ali mildly. ‘It’s really difficult for him to resist.’
‘What Niven needs is someone who can structure his creative life,’ said Rebecca. ‘That’s very different from being a doormat. He needs someone who understands what an artist is, who can stop him consuming himself.’
I lifted my eyes to my wife’s face and wondered whether she was considering offering herself for the position. A few weeks later, sitting in the pub one evening with some people we knew, I became aware again of the way Rebecca was talking. This time she was pouring her heart out to someone called Mike, the boyfriend of a friend of ours. We’d met him for the first time that evening. He had a white, startled face, and round, wire-framed glasses that may have contributed to his look of alarm as Rebecca bared herself to him. She said things I had never heard her say before. She appeared to believe herself to be visibly involved in some disaster or emergency, as though it were plain to everyone that she had come to the table buried in rubble or trapped in wreckage, and could be expected to be candid about it. On the way home I said to her:
‘You can’t talk like that to other people.’
‘Like what?’
‘You make yourself look ridiculous. You make me look ridiculous.’
There in the street Rebecca swung at me with her handbag. I hadn’t noticed the handbag until that moment; it was new. It was a little pink leather thing on a long strap. On the front it was decorated with a pattern of raised metal studs in the shape of a pair of lips. These lips met my cheek in a hard and painful sort of kiss.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you!’ I shouted, with my hand to my face. ‘But you’re upsetting me and you’re upsetting our son! He can’t even speak any more!’
It was true: Hamish was nearly four and made virtually no sound except a loud ringing noise like that of a bicycle bell. It was extremely startling when he did it. The teachers at his nursery school frequently expressed their concern, though I myself wasn’t entirely mystified by it. In fact, sometimes I wanted to make the same noise.
‘I feel erased,’ said Rebecca. She began to weep.
‘I don’t want to hear any more about your problems,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. It’s up to you to make your life how you want it.’