A. Miller - The Faithful Couple

Still she didn’t move. They drank; she gulped. The booze and the music and the moment had their own logic.

What the fuck was he doing?

When Neil thought of the randomness of it, all the reasons it could have been extinguished, not just the primordial grievance but neglect or drift or routine jealousy, his friendship with Adam was like a whim of evolution, a platypus or an anteater, so precious and unlikely. Even now, even these last few years, there was no one he trusted or needed so much. Neil trusted Adam more, in a way, because of his frankness over California. Among his living family, only Sam came close, Sam who was a different kind of relative, a friend, almost. This ought to be as taboo as incest. He began to blush.

At the same time, considered in a certain light, wasn’t this what Adam wanted? To compete with Neil, and to incriminate him. What he had always wanted. In California Adam had ushered him into the wrong, urged, provoked and finally deceived him into it. In London he had assailed Neil with a remorse he hadn’t recognised, needling allusions that he had privately interpreted as sabotage. Finally Neil had seen and suffered the shame that Adam had insisted on, and resented his friend anew, for both the insistence and, belatedly, for his part in the event.

She’s up for it, mate. That was what Adam had said. Stop making excuses.

These past two years Neil had thought of her when he saw Sam. Sometimes he thought of her when he saw Adam with his daughter. Between the three of them — Neil, Adam and Rose — they had driven Jess away.

I knew she was younger.

Since Adam wanted Neil to be guilty, perhaps he should be. He could earn the guilt that had been foisted on him.

They babbled. Was Claire going back to work? Scarcely worth it — the costs of childcare. His mouth was dry; he drank. He curled his fingers inside her arm and around her ribcage. She sat up straight but didn’t withdraw. With his other hand he put his empty glass on the arm of the sofa and fingered the mole on his neck.

He wanted a refill — there was still an inch of wine in the bottle — but he was reluctant to move. He was sober enough to know that he had drunk too much (he would have to leave his car and send someone out from the office). Her breasts were contoured against her sweater. His palms were damp; he felt the twitch of an erection, a warning-shot harbinger of his instincts.

Neil expected to regret this for ever; never mind for ever, he regretted it already. At the same time he felt wonderfully serene. Her head and her hair were warm against his shirt but the skin of her arm felt cold. An image came to his mind, from some ancient TV programme, of men in an exotic country (Brazil? Mexico?) stunt-diving from a cliff into the fearfully shallow water a long way below, their arms poised and cruciform as they tilted over the precipice. He felt as he imagined those divers must have felt: exhilarated, imperilled, yet tranquil in the inevitability of the fall.

‘Claire,’ he said. ‘Claire.’ He spoke so softly that she leaned still further into his chest to hear him.

He twirled a ringlet of her hair around a finger of his drinking hand. He could feel her breath against his neck. He had so wanted to match Adam, so admired his sophisticated charm, and envied it. He still did, despite everything that had happened since, what other people might construe as his success or Adam’s failure. And these things that his friend had now, Claire and the children, a life Neil had so persuaded himself he couldn’t emulate that he had resolved not even to want it.

He half-expected her to move or to stop him, but she didn’t.

How much? That much?

She must be drunk, too. Drunk enough. A woman like her, who for much of Neil’s life wouldn’t have given him a second glance. If he had misread her, he might never see Adam again. He might never see him again if he hadn’t. And yet the weight of her against him, her scent, her warmth, were so perfect. His senses were at once blurred and sharpened by the wine, intense but somehow indistinguishable from each other. So natural, so inevitable. It seemed to Neil that he had always wanted this, even if he hadn’t known, a newly discovered pedigree for his desire that let the faithlessness feel less ignoble.

Claire let her hand rest on his leg. Neil caught his breath. He heard the blood drumming in his ears. In the kitchen the pianist was dallying in the upper scales, sentimental and manipulative. I want it to be you , Rose had said. During the night, in the tent, he had seen her features twitch and frown, the hieroglyphs of a dream, her lips synching the words or protests that her dream self must have been saying.

He tightened his grip on her ribs. He turned his face towards hers. This would be only fair.

It was the wine, maybe, or the nerves, but his timing was out. He leaned over too far, too fast, and kissed only her hair; several twisty strands clung to his lips when he withdrew.

That might have been all anyway, the spell broken for both of them, but Neil would never know for certain. The front door opened. She snatched her hand from his leg.

Neil stood up, checking that his trousers were respectable. Harry marched through the living room to the kitchen and opened the fridge. He turned off the music, scraping a stool across the parquet to the counter to eat whatever it was he had extracted.

‘Hello, Uncle Neil,’ he called out, in the ironic tone that kids seemed obliged to affect. He had reached the age when they could no longer count on a smile, their size, the sheer audacity and miracle of their diminutive yet capable bodies, to win the approbation and indulgence of adults. Harry had realised that, from now on, he would have to earn them, and he evidently wasn’t pleased.

‘Me too,’ Ruby yelled as she trailed after her brother. She changed her mind and jumped onto the sofa, thrusting an illuminated, hand-held windmill into Claire’s face. ‘Hello, darling,’ Claire said, hugging her daughter more tightly than their temporary separation called for.

Claire’s mother came in with the children’s kit. She was thinner and greyer than Neil remembered her from the novelty cummerbund days. Her spectacles dangled on a long, professorial cord. She glanced from him to the bottle to her daughter.

‘Hi,’ Neil said, striding towards her and taking her free hand between his. ‘Neil.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I remember.’

‘Good to see you again.’

‘Yes.’ She turned to Claire.

‘I was about to leave,’ Neil said. ‘Adam’s not here.’

‘Okay,’ she said.

Neil called out goodbyes to the children, and to Claire, without looking at her. ‘Me too,’ he heard Ruby say to somebody.

He plucked his jacket from the banister and swam for the door, slamming it behind him more violently than he intended. He abandoned his car and swayed towards the station to find a taxi.

When he was almost home he took out his CrackBerry. He wasn’t sure he would have Claire’s number — he had no recollection of ever calling her directly — but there it was. He could sense the boozy ripeness of his breath in the cocoon of the cab. An early-onset hangover gripped the back of his head, competing for attention with his instant remorse. The car bucked and jerked in the traffic; the driver was telling a story to someone on his speakerphone: ‘… and he’s only gone and got himself a man bag, the dickhead. I said, what you got that for? He said, it’s for holidays. You dickhead, I said…’

Neil opened a window. No harm done , he thumb-typed. Let’s forget it . He hesitated for a moment and then pressed Send .

I’ve bailed , he wrote to Adam. Next week, maybe? Happy birthday