Learning by Heart: A Novel

One

Nick thought, as he came through the door and heard her voice, that the flowers were too much. They were too showy, three dozen blue iris. They looked like an apology. He stopped inside the door to shrug off his coat, awkwardly holding the flowers in one hand. They had been almost giving them away – the flower stall by the station in Charing Cross Road had been closing. But all the same …

His wife Zeph came out of the kitchen, and stood in the light from the room half-way down the hall. Joshua, their two-year-old son, trailed her like a shadow, one end of the comfort blanket stuffed into his mouth, the rest following him, a grey bridal train. ‘You’re late,’ she said.

‘I had to call in somewhere,’ he told her. He walked forward, gave her the flowers and kissed her. He looked down at Joshua, then back at her. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer. She lowered her face to the flowers, then went back into the kitchen and opened a cupboard for a jug to put them in. He was puzzled by the set of her shoulders, her half-averted face. She said no more but, then, there had been so much silence in the past year. He turned his attention to his son and picked him up. ‘Hey,’ he said to the boy. ‘You stink.’

Joshua crowed with delight and waved his arms. Nick realized he still had his keys, the script and the tickets in his hand, and put them carefully on the nearest work surface. Zeph glanced at them, at Joshua, then stood, a hand on her hip, leaning against the door to the garden.

‘What time are you going tomorrow?’ she asked.

‘Early,’ he said. ‘Five, half past.’

‘Is someone coming to collect you?’

He paused. ‘Why would they?’

She raised an eyebrow.

‘No one collects me,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m just the writer.’

‘I thought someone might call and share their car,’ she said.

He heard the edge in her voice, the chill. ‘What car?’ he asked. ‘Who would share with me?’

She said nothing, just turned to the stove. He watched her back as she stirred the contents of a pan. ‘It’s just three days,’ he said. ‘Maybe four. Only Paris.’

He stood there for another few seconds, waiting for her to respond, and when she didn’t he went upstairs, hoisting Joshua over his shoulder so that his son dangled down his back. It produced the usual fit of delighted screams.

Nick set the child down in his room, then went to run the bath. He came back and found Joshua struggling with his laces, then placing his shoes by the bed.

He looked at the line of figures that formed part of the complicated design on Joshua’s floor, and at Joshua’s bent head, the thick blond thatch. Joshua was like him: the broad forehead, the unusual combination of brown eyes, fair skin and hair. Sometimes Nick even saw his own past in his child, or his current preoccupations. Joshua’s insistence on orderliness, in the way his books were stacked on the shelves, his clothes folded in a drawer, the almost obsessive precision were his. And only the other day he had seen Joshua screwing a piece of paper into a ball and trying to bounce it on his knee. Now the memory brought a lump to his throat. He turned back to the bathroom, looked down at the swirling water. ‘Hey, little guy,’ he called. ‘Get yourself in here.’

Joshua came to the door. ‘Going to the pictures,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ he told him. ‘I’m going to help make a film. Only a few days. Be back soon.’

‘See Harry’s party.’

One of Joshua’s playschool friends was having a birthday party at the weekend, the event so shrouded in mystery and excitement that Joshua had had sleepless nights over it.

‘I’ll take you there,’ Nick promised. ‘Don’t you worry.’

‘Saturday.’

‘Saturday.’ His heart turned over with regret. He would make it up to Joshua, he thought. Joshua, who didn’t even know that he had been betrayed.

After supper, he packed his case upstairs, then went down. It was ten o’clock.

Zeph was watching television, a glass of wine balanced on her knee.

‘So,’ he said, sitting opposite her, ‘suppose you tell me what’s the matter?’

‘Is anything?’ she asked, her eyes on the screen.

‘Come on,’ he said.

‘What?’ Now she looked at him.

‘That face,’ he told her. ‘That expression. Have I forgotten something?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘At least give me a clue.’

She held his gaze. He got up, went over to her and put his hand on her arm. She recoiled, and he half-crouched to her level. He had been going to kiss her. He wanted more than that, too – he wanted to make love to her. Josh was asleep. He remembered the days when they took each other anywhere, even here, on the floor in front of the fire. Not so long ago.

She had tucked her arm into the depths of the chair, and sipped some wine.

‘Zeph?’

‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ she said. ‘You’ve got an early start.’

‘Come with me.’

‘I’m watching this,’ she said, and nodded at the television.

Puzzled, he considered her, then straightened up. ‘Are you sulking?’ he asked.

‘What do you think I’ve got to sulk about?’

‘My going to Paris.’

‘No.’

‘Or going anywhere, probably.’

She flashed him a look, took another sip, and stood up. ‘I don’t begrudge you going anywhere,’ she murmured, and turned off the television. ‘That was a story you concocted.’

‘Excuse me! You made a big deal out of my going to Hay-on-Wye, and I was a fucking speaker, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Don’t swear at me,’ she said. She walked out to the kitchen.

He followed her. ‘Well, you did,’ he insisted.

He heard her sigh. ‘I don’t care where you go,’ she said.

‘Oh, is that so?’ he retorted. ‘You don’t care – and that’s why you create such a bloody atmosphere every time.’

His wife was washing the wine glass; slowly and methodically, she dried it with a tea-cloth, and placed it on the shelf, aligning it precisely with the others.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

‘I’m going to my mother’s,’ she replied. She folded the tea-cloth and faced him, leaning against the draining-board.

Her answer took the wind out of his sails. He thought she had been angling for an invitation to the set, to Paris.

‘Somerset?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘But you haven’t been in months.’

‘I rang Mum this afternoon. I’m going in the morning.’

‘Well, ring her again and say you’ve changed your mind,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘To please you?’

He laughed in exasperation. ‘No, to please you, you silly bitch.’

She eyed him levelly. There was a long pause. ‘Why do you do that?’ she asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Use that kind of language to me.’

‘Use that kind of language?’ he repeated, astonished. ‘What’s this? The Campaign for Clean Speech? Who the hell have you come as tonight? Did I miss a scene change?’

‘You ridicule me,’ she said quietly.

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘don’t be ridiculous and I won’t have to.’ He spread his hands and grinned at her. ‘Problem solved.’

‘You think you’re very funny.’ It was a kind of weary admission to herself.

‘But I am funny,’ he objected, still grinning. ‘It’s one of the things they pay me for. Didn’t you know?’

‘But you’re not funny,’ she said tonelessly. ‘You’re facetious.’

He took a breath. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘So I’m a not very funny bastard. OK. Slap me, huh? Slap me hard. Come to bed.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Or to Paris,’ he said. ‘Or both.’

Still there was nothing.

‘Look, Zeph,’ he told her. ‘It’s fucking late.’

‘Stop saying that. Josh copies you.’

‘He does?’

‘Yes.’

‘He said that?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘A couple of days ago.’

‘He did?’ Nick laughed. ‘Cute guy.’ The idea creased him up. ‘What a cute guy.’

Zeph put a hand to her forehead. Once, she would have laughed too – in horror perhaps, but certainly at the absurdity of it. She wasn’t laughing now. She wasn’t even smiling. She was pressing her fingers to her eyes, then her mouth.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘come to Paris – please. Or don’t. Whatever you want. Come to bed or don’t. But, Zeph, don’t give me this routine. If I’ve done something, for God’s sake spit it out, and if I haven’t, well, goodnight. I’m sorry you’re pissed off about whatever it is.’ And he turned to go.

‘I won’t come to bed with you,’ she said, very softly, at his back. ‘I won’t do that again.’

He thought he’d misheard her. He looked back. ‘What?’ he said.

‘I’m not sleeping with you again,’ she said.

He started to smile, thinking it was some kind of wind-up. She used to tease him quite a lot. They had shared an understanding about it, that she could wrong-foot him and make him almost lose his temper before he realized it was a joke. It had been quite a turn-on. She could do it superbly. But it hadn’t happened for a long time now – like everything else that had come easily to them. They had lost it somewhere, the ease of being together. Some time in the past year, or maybe some time since Josh was born – anyway, so recently that he could still believe it was how they really were and that, one day, he would wake up and find that they had rediscovered the old ease and humour, and that the awkwardness between them had been a dream.

‘I’m not joking,’ she said.

He walked back into the room and stared at her.

She held his gaze, then went to the bookcase and took out a sheet of newspaper that had been slipped between two paperbacks. She glanced at it, then gave it to him.

It was the gossip column from that morning’s tabloid. There was a photograph of Nick and the actress in the film he was working on. They had been caught, mid-stumble, coming out of a club. His arm was round her waist. She was gazing up at him, her hand on his midriff.

He read the short article beneath it, ‘Bella James Steadies New Scriptwriter’s Nerves,’ then something – his heart thumped grudgingly – about this being his first script, and how the lovely second daughter of dashing theatre impresario, now a star in her own right … seen dining together …

When he looked up, Zeph’s expression hadn’t changed. It was as inscrutable, emotionless, as it had been all evening.

He felt short of breath, nauseous. He held out the page, angled towards her. ‘It’s just a picture,’ he said.

She waited, gauging his reaction. ‘When?’

‘When what?’

‘When was it taken?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe last month.’

‘It was one of the nights you were late,’ she said.

‘It might have been,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘An occasion that doesn’t matter?’

‘It was Patrick’s birthday,’ he said, remembering. ‘I just got roped in.’

It didn’t feel as he had thought it would. He had dreaded being found out. He had tried to imagine Zeph’s reaction, and pushed the thought from his mind a hundred times. He would never be found out, he had reasoned. Bella would never say anything. He certainly wouldn’t. It had been short-lived, and it was over.

Zeph went to the window and drew the curtain tighter, rearranging its folds, her back to him. Then she pulled the chair straight.

‘Zeph,’ he said, ‘it’s just a picture.’

‘Oh, yes?’ she murmured. She turned back to him.

‘You know what the papers are like.’

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t. You didn’t, either, until this film.’

‘Well, what am I expected to do?’ he asked. ‘I can’t say no, can I?’

‘You could invite me,’ she said.

‘It was just a drink, and it turned into a party on the spur of the moment,’ he told her. ‘It was nothing.’

She began to laugh. ‘And you a writer!’ she said. ‘I’d have thought you could come up with better dialogue than that.’ She shook her head.

A strange sense of injustice choked him. She should be crying. Wasn’t that what wives did, when they suspected their husbands of infidelity? Why didn’t she cry?

‘I can’t believe you could get so worked up about a photograph,’ he said.

‘So you’re not having an affair with the …’ Zeph glanced at the newspaper article, which he was still holding ‘… the lovely second daughter?’

‘An affair?’ he echoed. ‘You’d believe this bloody journalist?’

She fixed him with a stare. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t.’

Relief washed through him. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘It’s just … you know what they’re like …’

She held out her hand in a gesture designed to stop him coming any closer to her. ‘I wouldn’t believe it,’ she said, ‘unless someone else had told me it was true.’

Such was the shock that he actually stopped breathing. ‘What?’

‘Unless someone else had told me,’ she repeated.

He opened his arms helplessly. ‘Who would tell you a thing like that?’

‘Jess Turner.’

Nick’s stomach dropped. They had known Jess Turner for several years. He was an actor, and had dated one of Zeph’s girlfriends. They had made up foursomes for more than a year. ‘I haven’t seen Jess in months,’ he said.

‘Neither have I,’ she replied. ‘Until today.’

He watched her sit down again. She brought her legs underneath her and crossed her arms composedly over her chest. He thought that he saw a flicker of the pain she was holding in.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘Jess …’

‘He’s in Equatorial at the Duke of York’s,’ she said.

‘I know that.’

‘And so is the first daughter of the dashing theatre impresario.’

There was a beat. Two.

‘Of course she is,’ Nick said dully.

Zeph looked at him as he sat down opposite her. He felt the drag of defeat, the exhaustion of the secret carried and revealed.

‘I was going down St Martin’s Lane,’ she said, ‘to the National. He came out of the theatre.’

Nick put his head into his hands.

‘He came up to me and said he was sorry.’ Nick said nothing. ‘I asked him what he meant,’ Zeph went on. ‘I hadn’t seen the article. He walked me across the road and bought me the paper.’

That fuckhead, Nick thought savagely, his hands obscuring his face from his wife.

‘Everybody knew,’ Zeph said. ‘Everyone but me, apparently.’

A terrible prolonged silence descended. He dared not look up. He feared her implacability, the face he had seen when he first came through the door, more than anything else.

‘Don’t go to Somerset,’ he said, into his hands.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘I won’t go to Paris.’

‘But you’re needed there,’ she said bitterly. ‘And she’ll be there.’

He dropped his hands. Zeph was getting out of her chair. He scrambled to his feet as she made to walk past him. He caught her arm. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Zeph, please. Listen to me.’

‘Let go,’ she said.

He heard the tears, although she did not shed them. ‘Zeph,’ he said, ‘I’ve been tried here, judge and jury. Don’t pass sentence on me. Please.’

‘You don’t deny it’s true.’

‘No,’ he responded finally. ‘But Zeph … it wasn’t like that.’

‘Like what, exactly?’

‘It wasn’t … it was just …’ He dropped her arm. She made no move to leave.

‘How long?’ she asked.

‘Not long.’

‘A month? Two months?’

‘I saw her half a dozen times.’

‘Since just before Christmas?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘When you started work on this film.’

‘Yes. Zeph—’

‘You started an affair the first day you met her?’ Zeph asked. ‘Did you sleep with her the first day?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

‘Where did you sleep with her?’ she insisted, her voice rising.

He stared miserably at his feet. Suddenly she snatched the article from him and tore it in two. ‘You bastard,’ she said. ‘She must be ten years younger than you. How the hell did you get her to want you?’ She threw the pieces down in revulsion. ‘What did you say?’ she demanded. ‘That your wife didn’t understand you? Some cliché like that? That we really hadn’t been getting on, maybe had never got on. Perhaps you told her I didn’t love you.’ She stared at him. ‘Let me think,’ she said. ‘That we never had sex – that’s a good one. It would have made her determined to give you what your wife wouldn’t.’

She was staring at him intently. ‘You did,’ she murmured. ‘That’s what you told her.’ She let out a gasp. ‘Oh, Nick – you liar.’

‘I didn’t say exactly that,’ he protested.

‘Oh?’ she said. ‘Not exactly that? Well, what the hell, exactly, did you tell her?’

‘Zeph—’

‘Tell me!’ she shouted. And she hit him. She bunched her fist and hit him in the chest. It was so unexpected that he fell backwards a couple of paces. ‘Tell me,’ she repeated. Her voice dropped low. ‘Tell me, or I swear I’ll kill you, Nick. Tell me.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’s what I told her.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ she whispered. She turned away from him and put her hands over her face. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I can’t believe this.’

‘I know I’m to blame as much as you—’

She wheeled round, aghast. ‘I’m to blame?’ she cried.

‘No, no … I meant … Christ,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t know what I mean. Just that we haven’t been close for months – a year even, not since Josh, really …’

‘And that justifies it, does it?’ She was staring at him open-mouthed.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t. I’m just trying to tell you. I’ve missed you, I—’

‘So your answer was to take up with a stranger,’ she said. And her façade crumbled. She started to cry.

‘I didn’t think it through like that. Darling, please don’t cry. Don’t cry.’

She doubled up as if he had struck her, hands folded over her stomach. He tried to put his arms round her in that awkward position, but she stumbled backwards, pushing him away. When she stood up he saw something of Joshua in her: the fragile, helpless look of terror that he wore sometimes when the world seemed too huge to handle.

‘You did it,’ she whispered, as if confirming it to herself. ‘You really did. All day I’ve been hoping … I’ve been thinking it can’t be right, it can’t be true …’

He cursed himself. He should have denied it, he thought. Blamed Jess, the newspaper, anybody, rather than admit what he had done. ‘I didn’t think,’ he mumbled. He sounded crass, shallow, stupid.

‘You’re damned right you didn’t,’ Zeph replied. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. When she spoke again her voice had hardened. ‘But you’ll have plenty of time to think now. In fact, you and your girlfriend can think it through together. You’ll have all the time in the world.’ She tried to push past him, but he stepped back to bar the doorway.

‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

‘I’m going down to my mother’s, and I’m going to stay there,’ she told him.

‘But for how long?’

‘You’re quick to catch on, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘For good, Nick.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘Oh?’ she said. ‘Well, hey, I’m doing it.’

‘But Josh …’

‘We’ll work something out,’ she said. ‘You can squeeze in your visits between paying for hotel rooms. Although, actually, come to think of it, you won’t need them now, will you? You can bring the deliciously pouting Miss James here and screw her in our bed.’

He grabbed her shoulders. ‘Don’t take Josh.’

‘What do you expect me to do? Leave him with you and that bitch?’

‘Don’t take Josh,’ he repeated, and meant it. ‘I’ve seen other fathers at weekends, trying to find their wives who’ve gone off to God knows where with their kids.’

‘You should have thought of that before,’ she said furiously. ‘But, oh, I forgot. No man thinks with his head when his dick’s engaged.’

‘Don’t punish me with Joshua,’ he said.

‘Or what?’ she demanded. ‘What are you going to do about it? I’ll take Joshua and I’ll do as I like. That’s the price you’re paying, Nick.’

‘I need him here,’ he protested.

‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘Going to teach him that that’s what daddies do, like you’ve taught him to swear?’

‘You’re not taking him away,’ he said.

‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what I’m doing.’

‘Then I won’t go to Paris.’

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘It’ll still happen.’

‘I’ll stay here,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk this through.’

‘Stay or go,’ she said. ‘Talk until you’re blue in the face. Look what you’ve done to us! You bastard.’

Some fuse, some thread of caution, broke in his head. ‘And you’re a saint?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You’re so wonderful, so caring, you never think of yourself,’ he told her. ‘You won’t sleep with me, and when you do, it’s under sufferance. You don’t talk to me. You’re always in a bad mood. I feel like I’m treading on eggshells. You belittle what I do. You haven’t any patience. You talk down to me in front of Joshua.’

‘I do not!’

‘Yes, you do, Zeph. You always have. You’ve done it so much lately, it’s like routine. Let’s make fun of Daddy. What a bloody liability Daddy is. You know you do. You make me feel like a shit.’

Zeph hesitated. ‘You are a shit,’ she said.

‘And now you can prove it,’ he said. ‘Now you can tell Cora and anyone else who’ll listen to your catalogue of woe what a complete waste of space I am, and they’ll all agree with you, and I’ll be Public Enemy Number One.’

‘That’s right,’ she said grimly.

There was a second or two of complete silence.

‘And you can believe it?’ he asked.

A fraction of a second’s pause. ‘Of course I can. It’s true.’

‘But I take Josh to school, don’t I? I pick him up most days, too, if I’m here.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘congratu-fucking-lations. Once in a blue moon.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Not as often as I should.’

‘You sit up there in your ivory tower and act like you’re the important one.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All of that. I sit up there working when I could help you out maybe.’

‘There’s no maybe about it!’ she exploded. ‘I work part-time and I run this place full-time. And then you expect me to be a rampant nymphomaniac for your pleasure.’

‘For our pleasure,’ he said. ‘Remember that? For our pleasure.’

She was silent. Gradually, her face softened. He saw something else in it: regret, sadness. His heart felt as if it had taken a single great beat of relief.

‘Zeph,’ he murmured.

‘Yes, I remember,’ she told him quietly. ‘But once it’s gone you can’t get it back.’

‘You can,’ he protested, and tried to take her in his arms.

She pushed him away. ‘No,’ she told him, with finality. ‘You can’t, Nick.’

Two

Cora glanced at the sky as she came out of the house. The forecast had been for rain, but there was nothing yet, merely iron-dark clouds, sweeping in from the Quantock Hills. She stood in the yard of the farmhouse, shrugging on her rain-jacket, so old that even the waxy finish was threadbare in places.

‘Denny!’ she called, narrowing her eyes to focus on the fields, where the dog might have strayed. ‘Denny!’

The Labrador was elderly; he had gone out first thing that morning, and not come back, as he usually did, fifteen minutes later. Cora had opened the window and called him to no effect. Worried now, she had come out to find him.

The farmyard was in almost permanent shadow from the three sides of the house that surrounded it, but in a few paces the route through to the fields brought her to a slight slope thick with hawthorn. There was a gate in the hedge, and beyond that, two large horse-chestnut trees at either side of the path. In late spring, Cora would wake to see their vast banks of white candles; last year, they had been particularly abundant, and she had lain in bed for some time on May mornings, looking at them. She always woke at first light, and never drew the curtains. She had seen the trees as thick with snow as with leaves; seen them, too, bent against the westerly gales.

She gazed at them now, as she came through the gate, then lifted it to secure the latch. The timber had cracked and the gate had dropped; it was another job that needed doing. She hunched her shoulders automatically, and looked back at the house from her vantage-point.

Two things characterized her day more than any other. First, there was the view of the house below the chestnuts, a sanctuary whose roof was sunken in the centre, a peculiar warping of age above eighteenth-century walls. The overgrown lane and the road to Sherborne beyond it, invisible unless a car was passing down it. Beyond that, she could see field after field, tree after tree, and the distant grey-green rise of the Blackmoor Vale.

She turned away, and leaned against