Paul Theroux - My Secret History

It was zipped into the side pocket of her black handbag and it was in a plastic holder, which also held two second-class Christmas postage stamps.

“Have you looked in your handbag?”

“Of course I have!”

“Let me look. I might be able to—”

“Don’t you dare touch that bag,” she said in so severe a way I knew she must be concealing something.

A day or so later she said she had found her season ticket. I did not ask where.

I kept searching her bag whenever I had a chance, because she had been so insistent that day that I refrain from touching it. If she said she had bought a new pair of gloves I asked where, and I checked the label in the gloves to make sure she was telling the truth. If she said she would be working late I found an excuse to call her at the office at that late hour. I looked for loose ends, for any inconsistency. There was nothing, and it seemed to me that was the most incriminating fact of all; for one or two loose ends or unexplained moments would have been natural, but none at all was very suspicious.

I studied all her receipts, no matter what they were for — a new chair, a pair of socks, a haircut. If there was a nameless telephone number on any piece of paper, I called the number. I got Jack’s school, the doctor’s office, and even the bank, though it was not her office. Each time I put the phone down without giving my name.

“How’s your work going?” she asked. It was always the friendliest question.

My work! I had no work, except this fossicking in her handbag and searching the house for clues.

I said, “Slowly”—which was a lie. She believed me. “But my study’s cold. I need a warmer room.”

Doing nothing at my desk made me cold, and after a morning of it I got up and my hands and feet were numb.

She said, “Oh, yes, I borrowed the electric fire.”

I had forgotten there had been one in the room.

“I was wondering where it was,” I said, just to see what she would say.

She became very evasive. First she couldn’t remember. Then she said she had given it to someone. I asked who. She said, no, she hadn’t given it away — she had brought it to the bank. But it had broken — one of the bars had snapped. It was being repaired. A new element was being fitted.

She was a terrible liar. I almost felt sorry for her. But why was she being evasive?

Without any warning, I went to her office in the bank late one afternoon at closing time, three-thirty, and demanded to see her.

“My name is Andre Parent. I believe my wife works here?”

I had never been there before.

“Surprise, surprise,” one of the older women said in a stage whisper. And still smiling — friendly and malicious in the English way—“These men who make unannounced visits to their wives at work!”

But Jenny was unperturbed. She said that she would not be through for two more hours. We agreed to meet at The Black Friar for a drink after work. When she arrived at the pub she was more relaxed and friendly than I had seen her in a long time, and she said, “We should do this more often,” and kissed me.

We went home together on the train, holding hands, and while I made dinner and paid off the babysitter, Jenny said she was going to have a bath. As the spaghetti sauce bubbled on the back of the stove, I considered Jenny’s bag. I would not look — not after the pleasant hours we had just spent. But when I heard the door slam and the shower running I could not resist; my habit was too strong.

And I was so used to the paraphernalia in her bag that I immediately found the note, folded in half.

I would like to say in the nicest possible way that I love you in the nicest possible way. XX

No signature, no name.

I brought it into my room to examine it under my desk lamp.

“Daddy,” Jack called out. “You didn’t read me a story!”

I was not looking at the note anymore, but rather at the picture of Jenny and Jack. Who the hell took that picture?

Jenny came out of the bathroom in her robe, her wet hair tangled, her face pink with dampness and heat, a bit breathless from the exertion, and self-absorbed in the way that people are when they wash themselves — completely off guard.

I said, “I know you were having an affair while I was away.”

She said, “It’s all over.”

She had been surprised into the truth.

“So there was someone.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

She walked away, toweling her hair. I followed with my questions.

“Who is he? Do I know him?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She seemed very calm.

I had not mentioned the note I had found, or the snapshot I was sure he had taken. I had simply blurted out my accusation, and she had not denied it.

“How could you do it?” I said.

She was not apologetic. She reacted sharply. She said, “You went away. You left me — I was all alone. You didn’t even ask whether it was convenient — you just left.”

“And you went to bed with this guy!”

“What did you expect me to do?” I was astonished by the way she so easily admitted it and defended herself. But it annoyed me that she was not contrite. “Did you think that after you were gone I would spend night after night alone in this house?”

“I spent night after night in crummy hotels alone.”

“Perhaps you should have found someone to sleep with. I would have understood that.” She said it almost tenderly, but her voice became resentful when she added, “It was winter in London, and so dark and cold it was diabolical. You were in Turkey and India. Burma. Japan. Fantastic places.”

“They were awful! I was alone — I hated it.”

She rounded on me. “You chose to go. ‘My trip, my trip.’ I got tired of hearing you talk about it. And you didn’t have to go. I begged you not to.”

“We needed the money.”

“That’s not true. I have a job.”

“I had nothing to write. I had nothing to do. I couldn’t face the thought of sitting around.”

“I didn’t want you to go, but you went. You have to accept the consequences.”

“You’re incredible,” I said. “You couldn’t wait for a couple of months, until I came back.”

She said in a correcting and teacherlike tone, “Four and a half months.”

“You couldn’t wait!”

“Why should I? You were doing what you wanted. You weren’t waiting — you were having a good time.”

“It was miserable,” I said. “I can’t tell you how awful it was. You know that. I wrote to you almost every day—”

And now I saw her opening the letters. She stood by the front door and put her fingers under the flap of the envelope and clawed it apart. She pulled the sheet of paper flat, looked closely at the hotel letterhead — something misleading like Grand Hotel, Amritsar —and then glanced down and saw missing you very much and can’t wait to see you . After that, she went off and met the man.

“And you hardly wrote to me. Now I know why.”

“I told you why. It was as if you had died. I didn’t want to think about you. It just made me miserable.”

“Anyway you were screwing this guy, so I guess you had your hands full.”

“I knew it! I knew that’s all you’d care about — the sex. You can’t imagine that it was anything else.”

“If you have a lover what else is there?”

She was determined to make her point, for the sake of her pride. She said, “There are a lot of other things. There’s friendship. You wouldn’t know anything about that — you have no friends, you’re too selfish. And there are practical things. One day the car wouldn’t start. He started it by getting the battery charged—”