I decided to ignore it, and went on trying to think through the implications of what had just happened. But then the answering machine came on and I could hear Charlie’s voice leaving a message. Perhaps I sensed a lifeline, perhaps I just wanted someone to confide in, but I found myself rushing into the living room and grabbing the phone off the glass coffee table.
“Oh, you are there.” Charlie sounded slightly cross I’d interrupted his message.
“Charlie, listen. I’ve just done something rather stupid.”
“I’m at the airport,” he said. “The flight’s been delayed. I want to call the car service that’s picking me up in Frankfurt, but I didn’t bring their number. So I need you to read it over to me.”
He began to issue instructions about where I’d find the phone book, but I interrupted him, saying:
“Look, I’ve just done something stupid. I don’t know what to do.”
There was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said: “Maybe you’re thinking, Ray. Maybe you’re thinking there’s someone else. That I’m going off now to see her. It occurred to me that might be what you were thinking. After all, it would fit with everything you’ve observed. The way Emily was when I left, all of that. But you’re wrong.”
“Yes, I take your point. But look, there’s something I have to talk to you about…”
“Just accept it, Ray. You’re wrong. There’s no other woman. I’m going now to Frankfurt to attend a meeting about changing our agency in Poland. That’s where I’m going right now.”
“Right, I’ve got you.”
“There’s never been another woman in any of this. I wouldn’t look at anyone else, at least not in any serious way. That’s the truth. It’s the bloody truth and there’s nothing else to it!”
He’d started to shout, though possibly this was because of all the noise around him in the departure lounge. Now he went quiet, and I listened hard to work out if he was crying again, but all I heard were airport noises. Suddenly he said:
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, all right, there’s no other woman. But is there another man? Go on, admit it, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Go on, say it!”
“Actually, no. It’s never occurred to me you might be gay. Even that time after finals when you got really drunk and pretended to…”
“Shut up, you fool! I meant another man, as in Lover of Emily! Lover of Emily, does this figure bloody exist? That’s what I’m getting at. And the answer, in my judgement, is no, no, no. After all these years, I can read her pretty well. But the trouble is, precisely because I know her so well, I can tell something else too. I can tell she’s started to think about it. That’s right, Ray, she’s looking at other guys. Guys like David bloody Corey!”
“Who’s that?”
“David bloody Corey is a smarmy git of a barrister who’s doing well for himself. I know exactly how well, because she tells me how well, in excruciating detail.”
“You think… they’re seeing each other?”
“No, I just told you! There’s nothing, not yet! Anyway, David bloody Corey wouldn’t give her the time of day. He’s married to a glamourpuss who works for Condé Nast.”
“Then you’re okay…”
“I’m not okay, because there’s also Michael Addison. And Roger Van Den Berg who’s a rising star at Merrill Lynch who gets to go to the World Economic Forum every year…”
“Look, Charlie, please listen. I’ve got this problem here. Small by most standards, I admit. But a problem all the same. Please just listen.”
At last I got to tell him what had happened. I recounted everything as honestly as I could, though maybe I went easy on the bit about my thinking Emily had left a confidential message for me.
“I know it was really stupid,” I said, as I came to the end. “But she’d left it sitting there, right there on the kitchen table.”
“Yes.” Charlie was now sounding much calmer. “Yes. You’ve rather let yourself in for it there.”
Then he laughed. Encouraged by this, I laughed too.
“I suppose I’m over-reacting,” I said. “After all, it’s not like her personal diary or anything. It’s just a memo book…” I trailed off because Charlie had continued to laugh, and there was something a touch hysterical in his laughter. Then he stopped and said flatly:
“If she finds out, she’ll want to saw your balls off.”
There was a short pause while I listened to airport noises. Then he went on:
“About six years ago, I opened that book myself, or that year’s equivalent. Just casually, when I was sitting in the kitchen, and she was doing some cooking. You know, just flicked it open absent-mindedly while I was saying something. She noticed immediately and told me she wasn’t happy about it. In fact, that’s when she told me she would saw my balls off. She was wielding this rolling pin at the time, so I pointed out she couldn’t very well do what she was threatening with a rolling pin. That’s when she said the rolling pin was for afterwards. For what she’d do to them once she’d cut them off.”
A flight announcement went off in the background.
“So what do you suggest I do?” I asked.
“What can you do? Just keep smoothing the pages down. Maybe she won’t notice.”
“I’ve been trying that and it just doesn’t work. There’s no way she won’t notice…”
“Look, Ray, I’ve got a lot on my mind. What I’m trying to tell you is that all these men Emily dreams about, they’re not really potential lovers. They’re just figures she thinks are wonderful because she believes they’ve accomplished so much. She doesn’t see their warts. Their sheer… brutality. They’re all out of her league anyway. The point is, and this is what’s so pathetically sad and ironic about all this, the point is, at the bottom of it all, she loves me. She still loves me. I can tell, I can tell.”
“So, Charlie, you don’t have any advice.”
“No! I don’t have any fucking advice!” He was shouting full blast again. “You figure it out! You get on your plane and I’ll get on mine. And we’ll see which one crashes!”
With that, Charlie was gone. I slumped down into the sofa and took a deep breath. I told myself I had to keep things in proportion, but all the while I could feel in my stomach a vaguely nauseous sensation of panic. Various ideas ran through my mind. One solution was simply to flee the apartment, and have no contact with Charlie and Emily for several years, after which I’d send them a cautious, carefully worded letter. Even in my current state, I dismissed this plan as being a touch too desperate. A better plan was that I steadily work through the bottles in their drinks cabinet, so that when Emily arrived home, she’d find me pathetically drunk. Then I could claim to have looked through her diary and attacked the pages in an alcoholic delirium. In fact, in my drunken unreasonableness, I could even adopt the role of the injured party, shouting and pointing, telling her how bitterly hurt I’d been to read those words about me, written by someone whose love and friendship I’d always counted on, the thought of which had helped sustain me through my lousiest moments in strange and lonely countries. But while this plan had points to recommend it from a practical aspect, I could sense something there-something near the bottom of it, something I didn’t care to examine too closely-that I knew would make it an impossibility for me.
After a time, the phone began to ring and Charlie’s voice came onto the machine again. When I picked it up he sounded considerably calmer than before.
“I’m at the gate now,” he said. “I’m sorry if I was a little flustered earlier on. Airports always make me that way. Can’t ever settle until I’m sitting right by the gate. Ray, listen, there’s just one thing that occurred to me. Concerning our strategy.”
“Our strategy?”
“Yes, our overall strategy. Of course, you’ve realised, this isn’t the time for little tweakings of the truth to show yourself in a better light. Absolutely not the time for the small self-aggrandising white lie. No, no. You’re remembering, aren’t you, why you were given this job in the first place. Ray, I’m depending on you to present yourself to Emily just as you are. So long as you do that, our strategy stays on course.”