Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

He felt Daphne’s eyes on him. Her daughter stared as though watching a horror film.

‘I’ve been caught up in a witch-hunt, Ed.’ Ralph turned away from everyone else and addressed his old friend. ‘You know what I’m like – I’m no dirty old man or child abuser. It’s all mistaken. I’m dying, but I don’t want to die in prison.’ His plan to announce his death didn’t have a second phase and, now the declaration had been made, he wasn’t sure what to do. Perhaps they could lynch him and that’d be an end of it. He picked up a glass of white wine that stood available before him and took a large gulp as though staking a claim to being part of this feast.

Daphne was whispering in her daughter’s ear, planning their escape perhaps. Or maybe they really were about to call the police and he’d be back in that cell on the sticky plastic mattress within the hour. He grasped his opportunity in the continuing quiet. ‘There are murderers out there, boatloads of refugees drowning, bankers destroying the global economy. The whole planet is burning up and all anyone in England cares about is child abuse. It’s upside down. It’s mad.’

‘OK, we’re off.’ Daphne jumped up, holding out a hand to her daughter and they hurried over to Edmund, who observed the scene with the detached interest of King Solomon. Ralph wondered whether he’d take notes later. ‘Happy birthday, Ed.’ Daphne kissed her father briskly, waved goodbye to the nonplussed guests and left without looking at Ralph, her daughter in tow like a foal following the mare. Jane stomped out in their wake, huffing noisily as if to say, ‘I’ll get you yet,’ though Ralph gave no indication of noticing.

Breaking into the awkward hush, a woman said, ‘Would someone be able to give just a tiny explanation?’ Ralph recognised her face from the old Putney days. She must have been a colleague or a student of Ed’s, though he couldn’t recall exactly which. One of his former ‘pretty girls’, no doubt, though now she must be around sixty – grey hair cut in one of those ‘pixie’ crops and great jangling earrings that rattled when she spoke. She looked across at Ralph with a glinting eye of someone who’d read the Daily Mail .

‘Perhaps we should let Ralph say his piece?’ said Edmund, examining the chocolate icing that still dirtied his fingernails. Ralph sensed a small collective group sigh, like an audience settling down in the theatre as a play begins. Every face was focused on him, full of expectation. His legs hurt; most of his body hurt. But he stayed upright so as to properly address everyone at the table. It was an opportunity.

‘I’m guilty,’ he announced, consciously aiming for drama. ‘If guilty is love between two people who need to be together. For those of you who don’t know, I was arrested on charges of child abuse. I admit I haven’t always done the right thing. I’ve fallen in love when I shouldn’t have. But I’ve been true to myself. We don’t approve of adultery, but in this country, at least, we don’t lock people up or stone them or execute them for being married and having an affair.’

The pixie-haired woman was shaking her head and butted in. ‘It’s not called an affair when it’s with a child. That’s called abuse.’

‘Naturally,’ said Ralph, who had just recognised her: it was Dizzy, Ed’s old squeeze. ‘But who do you call a child? Girls who are now classified as children in England are required to get married and have babies in other countries. For Christ’s sake, we’re talking about grand passion and love, not legal systems. What about Romeo and bloody Juliet?’ He felt drunk and bizarrely liberated by knowing death lurked at such close quarters. He wanted to address the room as though he was singing an aria. ‘These are matters of the soul. They’re untidy. You can’t bundle a spirit into little, legal packages.’ Nobody spoke. ‘I’m no paedophile. I didn’t lurk in kindergartens or abduct anyone. It’s as though everyone is a pervert and all anyone thinks about is having sex with children.’

Grey-haired Dizzy stood up, muttering, ‘I can’t take this.’ She said goodbye to Edmund and the remaining guests and stalked out, followed by a man Ralph assumed was her husband and who called in mock cheeriness, ‘Happy birthday, Edmund! Thank you!’ Edmund waved back like the courageous captain of a sinking ship as the passengers are evacuated.

‘Thank you, dear, wise Ed,’ Ralph said, realising he should go too. Turning around, he saw Nina in the doorway. She was evidently in high dudgeon, as Edmund might have said. Shit. Who told her? Before Ralph could summon up the correct reaction, she swept over, placed her hands on his shoulders as though arresting him and, ignoring the audience, she said, ‘Come on, Ralph. We’re going home. You’re not well.’ She didn’t even greet Edmund.

It would have been a rather tidy solution, he thought later. She’d have spirited him away as if his entire appearance had been a mass hallucination. In fact, the blood drained from his face and a curtain of darkness descended. He didn’t realise he was falling. When he opened his eyes, he was lying down and had no idea of his whereabouts. An unknown man was holding his wrist.

‘You fainted,’ announced the man. ‘I’m a doctor – I was in the bar when they called me.’

‘It’s nothing,’ said Nina, as she usually did when someone injured themselves or was ill, especially if she was worried. Ralph looked up to the curious faces of Edmund’s friends peering down. He almost smiled. It was an odd perspective – looking up people’s noses. The floor smelled of carpet cleaner.

He refused to go to hospital. ‘No need. I’m fine now. It was just a swoon.’ They took a taxi back to Primrose Hill and Nina did not speak all the way, staring out of the window away from him at the rain-smudged, scowling city. She opened the front door, struggling with the key, which often stuck, and he pictured her as an old widow, bent and arthritic but fiercely capable. It managed to be both a desolate and somehow cheering image – the familiar world continuing after he was no longer there.

Before they took off their coats she turned to face him. ‘I won’t say this again, Ralph, so listen to me. Tomorrow morning, I am going to leave and I won’t come back. That is my plan.’ She looked grave and fierce as an Aztec Boadicea, her grey hair curled by the damp night air. ‘It’s not because I don’t love you, but I can’t take this any more. You can’t go on being false, making me guess, lying about where you go. So… You have a choice. You tell me everything. Not just some stupid little excuse like last time. And you keep telling me everything. Then I’ll stay.’ She removed her green woolly coat and hung it up. ‘Or continue as you are and you won’t find me here tomorrow. We’re too old. It’s too late for this.’

She left him in the hall and, with bewildering calm, boiled the kettle, made two cups of camomile tea and then, seeing him watching her from the kitchen doorway, said, ‘You decide.’

Without speaking, they got into bed, propped themselves up on pillows, and sipped the yellow tea tasting of old meadows. He started with his treatment. ‘I’m now officially dying.’ She didn’t say anything, just nodded, and he told her about Mr Goodlove. ‘I’m frightened of…’ He stopped, unaccustomed to revelations. ‘I’m frightened.’ For the first time in his life, his sexual secrets appeared petty, and he realised what he’d done to her by lying, by thinking he could divide up the world to suit his requirements. He tried to be as truthful as he could; her expression implied that she knew much of it anyway, or was not surprised. Sometimes she wiped away a tear but nothing more. She remained silent when he admitted how obsessed he had been with Daphne.