Tony Parsons - Man And Wife

The lamps had not been illuminated when I arrived at Primrose Hill. The days were getting longer. But night was falling at last and they would be turned on soon.

The crowds were thinning. It was becoming too dark for ball games, the pampered dogs of the neighbourhood were almost exhausted, and the young lovers were strolling off arm-in-arm to dinner in Camden Town or Hampstead or Swiss Cottage. I decided to take a quick walk to the top, and then go home.

The park on Primrose Hill is built upon one high, grassy peak. From up there you can see for miles. Down to London Zoo and the lush expanse of Regent’s Park. The West End and the City and Docklands in the distance. And, on the hill behind you, the wild woods of Hampstead Heath. I watched my city as day turned to night. The stars came out. The great metropolis was starting to twinkle.

And that’s when I saw her walking up the hill towards me. Her pretty face was flushed with exertion. She looked as though she had been walking all day. Ever since we had been supposed to meet, in fact.

’Sorry I’m a bit late, Kazumi.’

She reached the top of the hill, breathing heavily. She shook her head, and I didn’t know if she was telling me that she didn’t care or that she was speechless with rage. Then she sort of looked at me in a way that I understood completely. Because it said – kiss me, stupid.

So I did.

And just at that moment, from Prince Albert Road in the south, to King Henry’s Road in the north, from St John’s Wood in the west, to Grand Union Canal in the east, all over the length and breadth of Primrose Hill, the lights came on.

’Viagra,’ Eamon suggested, without me even asking him. ’Just the thing for a man with both a wife and a girlfriend. That’s what you need, Harry. Viagra. Amazing stuff. Although of course you know you’re getting a bit old when you can’t get it down.’

But it wasn’t Viagra that I needed. Because for a man with both a wife and a girlfriend, it was amazing how little sex I was getting.

You might think that my seed would have been spread thin and wide as I bounced from the marital bed to the girlfriend’s futon and back again. But Cyd had moved into the spare bedroom. The world my parents knew had finally turned inside out. For them there was no sex before marriage. For me there was none after.

We had separate rooms because I usually went to bed long after midnight, while suddenly Cyd was tucked up with a camomile tea just after the ten o’clock news. Cyd and I were both blaming work, because it was just too sad to admit that our problems went far deeper than mere scheduling.

Now she had turned down the offer to sell him Food Glorious Food, Cyd’s freelance work with Luke Moore was really taking off. She suddenly had a spate of early-morning breakfast meetings to cater, all these jobs in the City and the West End where businessmen ate croissants, pains au raisin and six kinds of bagel. And while my wife got her early nights, I was often out into the early hours, supervising Eamon’s return to stand-up.

Now that the TV was over, Eamon was going back to his roots, doing stand-up for the first time in years, even some open-mike stuff, and thinking about taking his act on the road. There was no money in it at this stage, and my savings account was steadily shrinking, but we both felt it was the only way back. He performed in small clubs, not much more than basements, where all we had to do was turn up. And I saw that the comedian dreams of stand-up the way the clown yearns to play Hamlet.

This was the heart of his craft, this was where he was truly tested. By nerves, by drunks, by all his limitations. So we spent our nights in sweaty cellars, where he was sometimes good and sometimes not so good but he was always funnier than his hecklers – ’Don’t I remember you from medical school? You were the one in the jar’ – and I wondered if he could really still do it without re-takes, an autocue, a full production crew and the Dutch courage of cocaine.

Eamon’s comeback took up a lot of my time, but in truth not all of it. Sometimes I told Cyd I was seeing Eamon when the person I was really seeing was Kazumi. And when I told her nothing at all, she didn’t seem to care.

I was out late and my wife was out early. And we both knew it was more than work. There were now long calls to her sisters and her mother in the States, as – I was guessing here, but I believed it was a good guess – the possibility of moving back home finally took shape in her mind. Our problem, this problem my wife and I had, was that we just couldn’t imagine our future together. We still loved each other, but there was a politeness and formality to our dealings that broke my heart. And we just couldn’t see how this thing between us was ever going to work out.

’Let’s see how it goes, shall we?’ Cyd said, making up her bed in the guest room.

So we see how it goes. Just another man and wife having trouble. But it seemed like the saddest thing in the world, this feeling that what we had right now was not good enough I to stay for, and not bad enough to leave.

And although there was no sex after marriage, there was none in Primrose Hill in the flat that Kazumi shared with a Swedish woman who was a second-year student at the Royal Academy of Music. It felt like our kiss in the dusk above London had opened a door for me, but now I was faced by a locked gate.

As Kazumi and I lay on her single bed, our clothes on and the curtains drawn, we heard the flatmate practising her cello in the next room. She was so good that the music, just the other side of the wall, was never intrusive. It was strangely soothing to have Chopin and Elgar and Haydn seeping through the thin wall, great swirling sounds of romance, all the passion that felt just out of reach. The flatmate played music that I somehow knew, although I couldn’t say where from, and also things that I had never heard before in my life. One piece that she played again and again – an exam was coming up – turned out to be ’Song Without Words’ by Mendelssohn.

The flatmate could have been studying accountancy or tree surgery, but romance is a series of happy accidents, and the fact that she played the most beautiful music ever written as Kazumi lay chastely in my arms seemed predestined, written in the stars, and made me certain that I was in the right place.

That music would have been the perfect accompaniment to a few hours of passion. But that was not what Kazumi wanted. Kazumi didn’t want to sleep with me. Just like my wife, in fact.

’I don’t want to be your dirty little secret,’ Kazumi said. ’It never works. Afraid to be seen together. Afraid of bumping against someone you know. What kind of life is that? You can call me but I can’t call you. And all the questions I would have to ask you. Such as, do you still have sex with your wife?’

’I can tell you the answer to that now.’

’No.’ She pressed a finger to my lips. ’Because I don’t want you to start lying to me. And even if they leave their wife, it never works. I don’t know why. Price too high, maybe.’

And I was Tom. I wanted to look after both of them. To love both of them. Kazumi and Cyd. In the way that they both deserved. And already I knew that was impossible.

You can love two women at once, but not in the way they deserve.

So I was constantly looking for the exit sign, trying doors, seeking a way out of this chaos. And I did it with Kazumi as well as Cyd. In my mad moments, when it all became too much, and the music stopped, I wanted someone – Cyd, Kazumi, one of them, either of them – to reveal something so painful that it would drive me away, that it would settle things once and forever.