Paul Theroux - My Secret History

I loitered because I had nothing else to do, and I followed Spearman for a few days, as I had followed Jenny. He lived in Sydenham, which was suspiciously near, though he was on a different line. He always went to Charing Cross Station alone. There was something about his shoes — scuffed, misshapen, with worn-down heels — that convinced me he was the man. He lived on the top floor of what had once been a huge family house, now divided into flats. His name was beside one of the eight bells.

“I know who it is,” I said.

Jenny had just come home. She was always at her most vulnerable then, too tired to fight; she wanted to sit quietly and have a drink. She was grateful that I had made the evening meal, and that it was ready.

She had put her briefcase down and was sitting away from the light. She was pale and looked exhausted.

She said, “Please don’t.”

“I’m not starting a quarrel,” I said. “I’m not angry anymore. I believe you when you say it’s over. I’m working on my book. It’s just that I know—”

Every word was a lie.

“It’s Spearman — I know it.”

She sighed and said, “No, no,” unwilling even to argue.

When I started to insist she put her face into her hands.

She said, “I’m glad you believe me when I say that it’s over—”

There was no irony in her voice: she really did believe me.

“But it wasn’t Andrew Spearman. That poor fellow. He lives in fear of being sacked. I loaned him the electric fire.”

“I could ask him about you,” I said. “I know where he lives.”

“Andy, please. If you promise me that you won’t make a scene, I’ll tell you who it is.”

She was speaking from the darkness on the far side of the lamp, and she remained in the shadow as she went on.

“Sometimes it’s better to know the facts. The less you know, the worse it is for your imagination. I wish you had never found out.”

I said, “I promise I won’t make a scene. I just want to know. I agree with you about the facts. My imagination is really dreadful sometimes.”

I was talking softly, but I was trembling. Didn’t she know that I would have promised anything? But it was like lying my way into a building — conning someone to gain entrance. It was more than that, though, because I was smiling, I was agreeing with her, I was using my charm and putting her at ease. It was like seducing her, and with a sigh — seeing no alternative — she submitted.

“It was Terry Slee,” she said. “Don’t be angry, darling.”

“I’m not angry at all.” I thought: I’ll kill the bastard.

I should have known. She had not chosen a man who resembled me — she had chosen my opposite. He was older — divorced, I discovered — rather well-dressed in a conventional bankerish way (the same uniform with slightly brighter stripes). He was worldly and ambitious. I woke every morning with the sense that I was far from home. This man was a Londoner, like my wife. He was the assistant manager at the bank. He had probably hired her. She saw him every day. I found that unbearable. I hated the way she had called him Terry — so familiar. The truth didn’t ease the pain. It only made it worse. I thought: There’s more, there’s always more.

Because she had chosen someone unlike me in every way I felt she had rejected me. I might have been able to rationalize another American, or explain a ne’er-do-well; and I had almost gotten used to the idea of Spearman and his broken shoes. But this ridiculous spiv, who had dumped his wife, so pleased with himself, his three-piece suits, his copy of the Financial Times , his affectation of carrying a sensationally battered briefcase — this was an insult. How could she?

And I had met him. Just before Christmas two years ago at The Black Friar. I had arrived early. They came in together breathless, laughing, pink-faced from the cold air, sharing a joke. Jenny saw me and stopped laughing.

“This is my husband.”

“I’ve heard so much about you,” he said. Not all English people shook hands; was that the day I learned it?

“I haven’t heard anything about you.”

“Perhaps that’s just as well.”

He spoke with a trace of a smile, believing that he was devastating.

Why hadn’t I suspected him? It was simple: because he was such a horse’s ass. I would never have guessed that Jenny would take up with someone like that.

I had been so wrong about her, so deceived, I felt justified in retracting my promise — all my promises.

“What are you thinking?” she asked me one day.

I have decided not to kill you, I thought.

When I did not reply, she said, “You never listen to a thing I say.”

I had no clear intention, only a general idea of destroying him; of making him as miserable as he had made me.

Every morning at eight-thirty, Jenny went to work. I stayed at home, wondering what to do, and stupefied by the thought that she had set off to meet him. They were together all day. I often imagined them sharing a joke, as I had seen that first time. The joke was me.

Almost every evening she said, “How’s your work?”

She did not dare say Your book .

“It’s coming along.”

There was no book. There wasn’t even a start. A book seemed like an evasion of all this, and anyway I was incapable of writing anything. My work was my dealing with this deception, even if dealing so far meant doing nothing. It occupied the whole of my privacy and had displaced everything else in my mind.

I imagined shooting him — suddenly opening fire, as he mounted the steps to his home; not killing him, but wounding him terribly, tearing an ear off, severing a hand, disfiguring his face, crippling him. He had a flat in a house in Islington. I sometimes loitered there. I thought of breaking all his windows, or setting the house on fire; pouring paint stripper over his car. I had heard of a man being able to bear severe persecution, even torture, and then breaking down completely when his dog was stolen. Slee had a cat. I had seen the creature at his window. I devised various ways of hanging the cat.

One night in February, Jenny said that she would be home late, and would I babysit? I said, of course I would. Later that evening, doubting her, I called her at the bank on her direct line.

“This had better be important, Andy. I’m going through the Chancellor’s budget proposals.”

That sounded convincing, she was in the office, as she had said.

“Sorry to bother you, darling. I couldn’t find the cough syrup. Jack’s got a cold.”

“There’s some cough mixture in the upstairs bathroom—”

But I was only half-convinced. I called Slee’s number in Islington.

“Hello … Hello,” he said. “Who is this? Speak up!”

I was satisfied. I put the phone down.

But I liked hearing his puzzled and irritated voice, and so after that, whenever I had the chance, I called him.

“Hello … Hello … Bloody hell. I don’t know what you—”

I was always determined to be the one to hang up first. On one occasion I played a tape of a dog barking, on another a sound-effects tape of maniacal laughter. I woke him at four o’clock in the morning, and the next time I tried his number was busy. To thwart me he left his phone off the hook. This was only ten days or so after I had discovered his name.

One Friday night Jenny called to say that she would be late.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll be waiting.”

I then dialed the Islington number. It rang and rang, but I had had four gins and my drunkenness made me patient.

Strangely, after so many rings, a woman’s voice came on the line. It was a timid and defensive whine, elderly and unsure of its vowels. The woman’s dentures wobbled, and she gave the impression, when speaking, of sucking candy.