My House Is Falling Down Read online

  Mark and I visited them once when the twins were little but the flight was a nightmare. It’s a hell of a long and expensive way to go for a bucket-and-spade holiday with the grandparents, and I wouldn’t let the girls play freely in the garden because earlier that month Lindsay had come across not one but two King Browns in the shrubbery. ‘Great lifestyle!’ everyone chimed. ‘Great lifestyle!’ But I wasn’t into checking flower beds for deadly reptiles or risk-assessing the car’s sun visors for venomous spiders. The heat was fierce and the climate as unforgiving as the social politics. I had never been anywhere so hostile. (The beaches were nice.)

  We have no plans to return and it’s a shame in a way because Lindsay’s someone I can talk to. I have happy memories of our three-year-old daughters in the curvature of her sun-stippled garden spray, begging for mercy and ice creams. David used to come to England every year to see Mark and his older brother Philip, then every eighteen months, but that has stretched to every two years. He and Lindsay are getting on a bit now and long-haul flights take their toll on ageing bodies and army pensions.

  When I ask Mark if he ever wishes his father had stayed home, retired instead into his native land and character, he says no. He says it wouldn’t have made any difference.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He was around so little when I was growing up that any geographical distance between us is academic, really. It was always Mum.’

  Mark was fifteen when Jane died. David was serving in Northern Ireland at the time and only when the cancer was so advanced that his wife’s chin was receding into her jaw, did David come home and stay home. It was quick. Mark was at boarding school with Philip, insulated from nothing, but David thought it best the boys stay put for as long as possible. They joined him for their mother’s last five days, helping to turn her in bed, repulsed by the feel of her spine through her nightdress, numbed into wordlessness by her reduction. Mark says they were appalled by the sores around her mouth, the few remaining wilted hairs on her puckered skull, skin like parchment; by how much she had withered. Rheumy-eyed, her fingers were comic-strip scrawny, her gums prominent, ugly.

  Betrayed, Mark retreated. He put his head down and worked. By the time he gained a place at Oxford he realized he had become so unsociable that quite apart from anything else his lip-reading skills were very slightly compromised. He needed new mouths in his life to keep him sharp. He had no choice: necessity demanded gregariousness. He willed himself to make new friends, went to parties – excruciating though he found them – and chatted up women. In close corners of gloomy pubs and ill-lit college rooms he hung on their every word and they, charmed by his rapt attention, fell in love with him in their numbers. But Mark was not besotted himself, he was simply concentrating on seeing what they had to say, a pursuit made more demanding by the lack of decent light to be found in a city comprised of old buildings with small windows. He even made a point, that first year at least, of singling out foreign students for his best attention. Apart from the thrill of sexual variety he badly needed the practice with accents – or so he claims.

  The greatest challenge came from the East; India and Iran, specifically. He tells me French and German women were a form of light relief by comparison. Scandinavians were pretty clear, the Dutch a little more challenging, but as Mark put it to me once, ‘Who cares about talking when there’s a pair of legs in your bed that are longer than the bed itself?’ Americans were easiest of all to understand, easier sometimes than the English: the English too often give up speech reluctantly, like a secret. Americans, Mark insists, have it all going on out front. They don’t swallow their words, don’t keep them all to themselves.

  Mark broke a lot of hearts over the ensuing years, for the pattern of easy non-loving that he developed whilst a student remained in place for a long while. A couple of times in his early thirties he made an effort to settle into something regular with attractive, friendly women but he didn’t find it easy. Jane’s premature death had doubtless made him wary of binding himself conclusively to another human being but if her demise had confined him further than he was already confined by his deafness, it was his independence – a harsh self-reliance required in order to cope in a silent world – that made him so inaccessible in the first instance. To survive in solitary confinement, let alone prosper, demands levels of discipline and self-belief not required of many people and in working so hard to be ordinary, Mark made himself exceptional.

  Interestingly, people took it as read. They did not understand that instead of being straightforwardly lavished with talents Mark was compelled to obscure his impairment with hard-won achievements. His memory and scrupulous attention to detail were legendary among those who knew him but few people realized that he had his own techniques and contrivances, developed in childhood when it became clear that without that crucial fifth sense it was going to be much harder for him to remember things than it was for those who could hear. Deprived of the recollective clues with which sound is suffused, all the triggers and insinuations, the myriad hints and prompts, Mark’s dependence on alternative reminders was considerable. Anything that might prove a useful aide-memoire for the future was recorded by him in a small notebook or scribbled on Post-it notes that were stuck, hopeful as religious petitions at a shrine, to the walls of his studio. It didn’t much matter what it was – whether a place visited, a person met or an idea procured – Mark, clerk-like, would document it. He does so still to this day, not in order to chronicle the passing of time but so he may be able reliably to refer backwards in order to avoid admitting, when a memory needs retrieving, ‘I can’t remember because I didn’t hear it.’ That, he insists, would feel like the admission, ‘I never remember because I’m not really whole.’ And fuck that.

  What anyone else made of Mark’s younger self, a persona so assiduously shaped by private resolve and concealed methods, the man himself could not afford to care, preferring to be defined by determination rather than by the deafness he sought so determinedly to overcome. If people considered Mark extraordinary despite his deafness instead of being extraordinary partly as a result of it, that was good enough for him.

  All of this had its downside, though. While Mark’s tenacity set him apart, in an ironic twist of fate the more he strove to prove himself in no way lacking, the more he came to be regarded as having an indecent excess of good fortune: talent, brains, looks, wit. This aroused envy in others, and not a little distrust, either. In addition, his commitment to keeping his appreciable exertions hidden beneath a carapace of effortlessness lent him an air of inviolability, so whilst his admirers thought him charismatic and charming his detractors took him for a smooth git: they thought him slippery and impregnable, a bit of a tosser; conceited.

  In no area of his life did Mark invoke more resentment than in his treatment of women. Not only did he garner them with ease but he maintained their fascination as well as any of his male contemporaries, and with almost no inconvenience to himself. He became adept at sustaining a lot of ankle-deep relationships at once and professed not to understand why the women he slept with minded so much the lack of depth. He promised them nothing, was his reasoning. Certainly, he had enormous appeal. His jawline was strong, his skin smooth, his eyes long-lashed and the dark, near-shoulder-length curls he had grown in order to conceal his hearing aids enhanced his natural sexiness. He was clever and punctilious and made people laugh. By the time he was painting seriously, in spattered Levi’s and large checked shirts, the way he looked, combined with the stacked canvases, tubes of oils and the reek of paint that suffused everything he possessed, lent him a compellingly romantic quality that even his darker characteristics could not easily dispel.

  He was also, and crucially, flattering to a fault. He gave each of his girlfriends a nickname and remembered details about their mothers or little brothers – even their childhood pets. He could recall their favourite foods, the music that had meaning for them (even though the latter usually meant nothing to him), and the various reasons why
their last relationships did not work out. He was highly plausible. They didn’t know that Mark remembered people’s personal details because he had trained himself to. (After all, there are probably only so many times you can ask someone to repeat themselves before they may stop wanting to see you any more.) As a result, they felt uniquely cared for.

  They were anything but. Mark appreciated diversity but offered special treatment to no one. He was never mean – at least, that’s what he says now, and it’s probably true if you’re being loose with the word: he has admitted to being neglectful and deliberately evasive, but overtly mean? This he denies, though not forcefully. I tell him that evasion is mean and there is such a thing as cruelty by omission, too, but he says that not a lot of single men subscribe willingly to that notion, at least not when they are young, and he was no exception: being called a fucking lying, shallow bastard once in a while seemed a small price to pay for unlimited personal attention. Therefore, his door was always open, even if his heart was not, and because he found the company of women so agreeable, some took it to mean he might be disposed to love them. When he made it clear that this was unlikely, the sensible ones disappeared to find a better bet.

  Others, whose devotion superseded their good sense, lingered to see if they could persuade the bastard otherwise. Disinclined to turn down all of his girlfriends outright, Mark listened to their coaxing and inducements. He invited them back into his bed and they accepted, relieved, for briefly they believed that he had registered their longing and distress and was touched. Yet while he upheld a relaxed and jocular atmosphere, he was palpably unmoved. Ultimately, his cheerfulness was a rebuke too far. ‘Don’t cry!’ he would plead, for almost inevitably they did, understanding at last that even the most carefully played-out reunions did not signify hope for a future. Most men are exasperated by tears but the main reason Mark shrinks from the lachrymose is because he can’t lip-read mouths distorted by sorrow. Still, cry they mostly did. A couple threw things at him in frustration, or so I gather. Another even punched him in the jaw. One woman, Greek I think, went the extra mile and kicked a hole in a canvas. Later, she sent photos of her wedding. ‘Oh, my God!’ said Mark, as the bride emerged resplendent from a creamy envelope embossed with the new family name. ‘I remember her!’

  When I asked him once, ‘Why me?’ he replied as if I’d asked him something as incontrovertible as whether night follows day: ‘Because I love you.’

  When I said that there is always more to love than love, he said he liked the fact that I didn’t beat about the bush: I wanted him, I let him know and I made it clear from the beginning that unless he felt the same way in return I wasn’t going to stay for breakfast – so to speak.

  ‘It focuses the mind, that. From day one, I knew I didn’t want to lose you. I’d never felt that way before. Also, you have a lot of energy. You want that in a wife. No man wants a passenger, he wants a co-pilot.’

  Mark didn’t ask me what it was about him. He didn’t feel the need to, I suppose.

  ‘Don’t you want to know?’ I enquired. ‘What it is about you?’

  We were lying around in bed, warm and lazy, the duvet rippled. He pulled me into his embrace.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he said.

  ‘I trust that you will never let me down.’

  He kissed my forehead.

  ‘And I won’t.’

  And he hasn’t.

  I am in a mood for disposal. I move through my home, seeking out the ropiest pairs of shoes, single socks, broken toys, ill-fitting underwear, chipped plates. I fill bin-bags with old clothes. As a police officer might seize the opportunity to bust a criminal skulking in a dank lock-up, I fall upon the bucket beneath the kitchen sink. ‘Aha!’ I say. ‘Your time is up.’

  I bought that bucket when Mark and I married – I recall its purchase very clearly. I remember thinking that buying a bucket to put beneath the kitchen sink was a totem of married life if anything was. Now, I decide, it has seen better days. Like us, I think – and then I stop myself. Maybe not like us, after all.

  I drop the bags of clothes at the village recycling bins. The bin for paper and card is overflowing. Trodden into the ground beside it a popular TV actor smiles broadly from the straggling pages of a tabloid newspaper. ‘Nation’s favourite’. ‘A household name’. He has been cavorting for twenty years with a cadre of prostitutes in a basement in Paddington, and one of them has decided it’s time to let everyone know that he likes it in the dark and he loves to be punished; the weirder, the better. Without even bending down, I can read that his wife has gone into hiding: she is photographed leaving the £1.75-million family home, looking hunted. She is in the dark now, feeling punished. Friends of the couple testify to his devotion: ‘She’s his rock,’ says one. ‘He’s beside himself.’

  Beside himself. I picture the actor split in two – his alter ego always elsewhere, wanting to be free, wanting to be sequestered – and I wonder what difference there is between him and me. My desire for Angus may not be hidden from my spouse but many would judge it freakish or unacceptable, the way I crawl into the dark of Verity’s hull, into Angus’s creaky old bed. He may not dangle me from the ceiling with chains, or whip me into a frenzy with God knows what implements but perhaps my falling asleep tight in his grip is equally treacherous.

  It is possible that if people knew, some might be sympathetic. Many have troubles of their own. Some would see me differently, and an unhappy few would relish their own lack of charity: the world can be unmerciful, with its carping and its ready judgements, and even amongst friends there are those who are always ready to see someone else’s dream tainted. Most, I am sure, wouldn’t care. Among those who might care, there would be some for whom I would be a disappointment – for not being quite the person they believed me to be; for causing them to stop and take stock. What we do causes others to reassess.

  A mother from school is posting crushed plastic milk bottles. She says, ‘You’ve had a good clear-out by the looks of it.’

  The manager of the village shop wants to know where I’ve been hiding: ‘I haven’t seen you in ages. I was beginning to think you’d deserted us.’

  ‘I’d never do that.’

  ‘Only kidding,’ she says.

  A good clear-out. I wonder, often these days, whether I have become part of the general destruction of something much bigger than myself. I, with a husband and children, a job of sorts, a clean driving licence and no criminal record: am I, along with the drug-dealers and teenage fathers and every other subgroup that society cares to blame, just as responsible for its breakdown? I bet I am the only woman in the village doing this. I don’t know that for sure but I would put good money on it – like the gambler that I seem to have become; overspending on pleasure, notching up debt after debt, knowing that one day I will have to pay but for now there is Angus, warm salve to my troubled spirit. Maybe if my presence cannot be counted upon in my local shop, let alone the marital home, I am undermining something reliable in the community to which I surely bear some responsibility. Perhaps I am tugging, bit by bit, at the tiniest threads of other people’s social fabric, destroying, indiscriminately, things that are whole. It makes me feel sick, to think about.

  Every instinct I have is telling me to stay at home. I ignore them all. I move in a straight line for Angus and nothing stands in my way. I cook meals, wash clothes, confirm dates with existing clients, answer questions from potential ones (‘Do you do pets?’ ‘It depends. Not reptiles.’). There is always more required of me but at some point, I walk past the remaining demands, like a soldier through the debris of warfare, and make my way towards Angus. I am possessed by the desire to be with him. There is nothing to my left, nothing right.

  Reason crumbles. Habits fall away. In the light of the open fridge door, naked at 2 a.m., Angus falls upon a chocolate cake I brought with me – purchased at school on a Fundraising Friday and made by Sandra, mother of Chloe in Year One.

  ‘“May contain nuts,”’ he reads. ‘Right u
p your street then, saucy girl!’

  Who’s to say where and when cake should be eaten, and in what circumstances? Nonetheless, I feel as if something has been defiled.

  ‘I love this,’ Angus says, and I don’t really know if he means me and him or just the chocolate cake. When I try some, it sticks to my teeth. I hate myself.

  My absences from the twins seem to me so inexcusable that in my attempts to compensate all manner of things improve. The quality of my attention wavers less. I listen to what they have to tell me. I invest more in the games we play and the stories I read to them at bedtime. I cook better and with more care and invite their friends to play at the weekends. When they drop glitter on the carpet I do not chide. The fuller I am of Angus, the greater my commitment to anything that may disprove evidence of his impact on our lives. The more profound my shame, the less I criticize Mark. These by-products of my remorse keep me busy. I am so convinced of my delinquency that I will do anything. I sign up weeks ahead to run a stall at the school fete. Conspicuous effort is my only redress, tenderness my reparation.

  It fails to unite my two halves. On the day of the fete – and surely because a school event is one place he really should not be – Angus is on a loop in my mind, raising himself beside me on his bed, pulling me gently up and towards him, settling his body on to mine: up and over; hold; pause. Hold. Pause. I wonder at the loveliness of Angus’s face as he looks down into mine. I am in thrall to its contrasts, to its cragginess and finer features. It is a face that is getting old but to me it is beautiful still: the lines around his mouth are deep, like ravines in silk.