To Have and to Hold Page 29

  Joe stopped walking and stood stock-still. “What are you talking about, Alice?”

  “You can get a cab from the station,” Alice continued. “But I’m going to assume you’ll be here by lunchtime.”

  “Alice . . .”

  “No!” Alice cuts Joe off with a shout. “Joe, I know. Okay? I know. I found the e-mails. I know about Josie. I know about all of it. I will talk to you when you get here.” And she puts the phone down, without giving Joe a chance to defend himself.

  Joe stands immobile, the color draining from his face as his feet feel rooted to the spot. “Shit,” he whispers. “Oh, shit.”

  He doesn’t go back to Josie’s, can’t handle talking about this, explaining it, seeing her. He knows he just needs to get to Highfield, to reassure Alice, to think up some excuse, some plausible reason, something to help her forgive him.

  And here he sits, on the train, trying to think of an explanation. The best he can come up with is that Josie is a flirtation, that nothing real has happened, that it’s like virtual sex and he’s only indulging because Alice is never around, and he’s lonely.

  It could be true. After all, Alice is never around, and he’s a normal red-blooded male. Naturally he’d never do anything to hurt Alice, but he’ll tell her that all he was doing was indulging in a little flirtation that may have gone too far. Of course he isn’t having an affair, he’d never do that to Alice, and even as he thinks up his excuses his expression becomes contrite, apologetic, and he knows that he can win Alice over as he has always done.

  Joe walks in and finds Alice sitting on the sofa. Snoop beside her, his head resting on her lap, his eyes closed. Snoop raises his head when he hears the front door open, looks at Joe with baleful eyes, then drops his head again as Alice continues stroking his ears.

  Alice doesn’t say anything. Just looks at Joe, and Joe realizes how strange it is to see Alice, who is always on the move, doing nothing. There is something so unsettling about this that he doesn’t know quite what to say, and then he wonders if he may have misjudged the whole situation. He realizes with a jolt that he doesn’t know Alice anymore, doesn’t know who she is, what she’s thinking.

  Joe is used to being the one in control, but he cannot control Alice any longer, and with a shock his confidence disappears and he falters just inside the doorway, not knowing what to say.

  And then he sees the bags. On the other side of the front door are two suitcases, not yet zipped, and inside he can see the few clothes he keeps here, his office files, some books, his toiletries.

  Oh, shit.

  Joe sits on the sofa opposite Alice, and suddenly he feels like a little boy. He feels guilty, and scared, and he doesn’t know what to say. For the first time in Joe Chambers’s life, words have failed him completely.

  And so they sit, these two people separated by so much more than a mere coffee table. Alice continues to stare into space, and Joe looks at the floor, the silences punctuated only by Joe sighing or a large yawn from Snoop.

  Alice is the first to speak. She has gone over and over this moment, imagined herself screaming at him, raging, venting all her fury and humiliation, but now that he’s here all she feels is a deep sadness. He looks so lost sitting opposite her, unable to meet her eyes, that she almost feels sorry for him, but most of all she feels sorry for her marriage.

  He belongs in another world, she thinks, looking at his clothes, his watch, his shoes, knowing how important these things are to Joe, how vital it is to be seen wearing the latest status symbols, with the trophy wife, or mistress, at his side.

  And she realizes that she is about to break the habit of a lifetime. At thirty-six years old Alice finally knows who she is, and Alice finally likes who she is. Having spent her entire life trying to please other people, Alice now knows that the only person she wants to make happy is herself.

  She expected to feel so angry, but the anger left her some time during the night, washed away with the tears, and she’s too tired to shout, or even to discuss. She doesn’t want to hear an explanation, or an apology. It’s too late for that. Perhaps he will say that it’s not what she thinks, that he hasn’t done anything wrong. Perhaps he will blame her, saying that she is never around, she hides away in the country and who can blame him for a harmless flirtation? Perhaps he will admit to a full-blown affair and either tearfully apologize or tell her it’s over.

  That would be the easiest, Alice thinks. If he were to admit it, and tell her he was leaving her. Of course she’d be devastated, but she knows, as surely as the sky is blue, that the marriage is over, and now she just has to find a way to say it out loud.

  “This isn’t working, Joe.” Alice is the first to speak, both her voice and the words sounding unnatural and strange in the echoey silence.

  Joe looks up. He had expected many things, mostly to have to calm her down, reassure her, explain, but he hadn’t expected this, and this is the one scenario for which he has no plan, no explanation, no defense.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this. Us.” Alice closes her eyes. “Oh God, I sound like such a bloody cliché, but our marriage. It’s not working.”

  “Alice, I know what you think, I know what you must have thought when you read those e-mails—”

  Alice stops him. “No, Joe. It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “But it does, Alice. I need to explain. Josie is just—”

  “No! Joe, you don’t understand. I don’t care.” And Alice is as shocked as Joe when those words emerge. Joe because he has always thought that Alice loved him more than he loved her, and Alice because she realizes the truth in her words. She no longer cares.

  “But . . .”

  Alice shakes her head. “No, Joe,” she says sadly. “I don’t need an explanation. I don’t care enough to hear what you have to say. Admit it. Neither of us have been happy for a long time. Maybe this was supposed to happen, to help us realize how far apart we’ve grown.”

  Joe is silent. He could have dealt far more easily with tears and anger and recriminations. He could have dealt more easily with soothing her wounds and carrying on as they had always carried on, in the pattern that is so familiar to him, that is all he has ever known.

  What he cannot deal with, what he was not prepared to deal with, is the truth.

  “Joe. I just can’t see the point in pretending. I’ve been up all night thinking about things, and I love you, but I’m not what you want. Not anymore. And you’re not what I want either. I can’t bear the way we look at one another, the way we struggle to find things to talk about, and I don’t want us to stay together just because we’re married and it’s a habit, and we don’t want to rock the boat.

  “I am so happy here.” Alice gestures around her. “I love my house, I love being in the country, I love living in a small town and knowing my neighbors. And I know how much you hate it. You hate it as much as I hate being in the city, and neither of us can pretend to be something we’re not.”

  There’s a silence as Joe digests what she has said. There’s nothing to say. She’s right.

  “So that’s it? It’s over?” After a while Joe points to the bags. “I see you’ve packed my things.”

  Alice nods slowly. “I want to be able to say it’s just having some space, that we need some time, but it’s not working and I can’t see the point in putting off the inevitable.”

  Joe looks at Alice for the first time then. He wants to tell her that it could work, that if she reverted back to the old Alice it could work again. See how she’s barely mentioned Josie, she’s already forgiven him for the affair. It could still work. He opens his mouth to say this, but stops.

  She’s right. He knows she’s right. He changed her once, when she was much younger, much more adoring, was willing to do anything to make him happy. But she won’t do it again. They’ve both come too far to try to turn the clock back to the way things used to be.

  “I can’t believe our marriage is over,” Joe finds himself whispering
as tears start to prick his own eyes.

  “Please don’t start crying,” Alice says gently. “I couldn’t bear it if you started crying too.”

  “Can we at least talk about this some more? Maybe when we’ve had a bit of space? Can I call you?”

  “Why don’t we leave it for a couple of weeks, let’s just try and adjust.” Alice is amazed at how calm she is, how normal her voice sounds, but she realizes that she’s only able to maintain her composure because she can’t quite believe it’s really happening.

  Joe leaves half an hour later. Packs his suitcases in the trunk of the cab, turns to Alice to try to say something else, but Alice just shakes her head.

  “We’ll speak soon,” she says sadly. “There’s nothing else to say right now.”

  Joe tries to put his arms around her, but Alice’s body language stops him, and instead he leans down and kisses her on the cheek. Alice doesn’t respond.

  “Take care,” he whispers, turning quickly away so Alice doesn’t see the tears, even though she hears them in his voice.

  Alice watches numbly as the taxi disappears up the driveway, watches the back of her husband’s head as his own tears start to fall. He had always thought he was invincible. That he would never be found out. And most of all he had never expected Alice to throw him out.

  Joe refuses to talk to anyone for four days. Josie phones but he switches his mobile phone off, unable to deal with talking to her. He calls in sick to the office and works his way methodically through his wine cellar.

  A ’90 Latour, an ’86 Haut-Brion, and a ’63 Petrus. Drowning his sorrows, he stops drinking only to sleep or to order pizza.

  A few times he picks up the phone to call Alice. The floor of the library is covered with old pictures. Joe and Alice looking tanned and happy, arms around each other’s necks as they sit on a sunbed at Cap Juluca, grinning as a passing waiter takes their picture.

  Alice looking chic and beautiful, snapped at a restaurant opening for Hello!, her blond hair scraped back into a chignon, a low-cut white silk shirt showing off her golden skin.

  Joe and Alice together again, sitting on a squashy golden sofa at a friend’s house in the country, both of them sipping Pimm’s, Joe with an arm around Alice’s bare shoulders, Alice so elegant in a black halter neck and diamond stud earrings.

  Joe studies these pictures through his drunken haze and picks up the phone, imagining that his beautiful Alice will pick up, that he will somehow be able to phone the Alice in the pictures, bring her back to the present.

  But as the days pass and he sobers up, he looks again at these pictures and sees how much Alice has changed.

  When was the last time he saw Alice looking as she did in these old photos? When was the last time her hair was ice blond and sleek as silk, her clothes a mix of simplicity and sophistication so stylish as to have several articles written about her in the English papers?

  What would those same journalists say if they saw her now?

  Joe snorts to himself with amusement as he thinks of them secretly snapping Alice in her garden. “From Gorgeous to Grunge,” he imagines the headline. Her muddy jeans, quilted sports coat, and Timberland boots hardly epitomize the aspirations of Daily Mail readers.

  You can take the girl out of the garden but you can’t take the gardener out of the girl, he thinks wryly, dropping the last wine bottle into the waste bin just as the buzzer rings in his apartment.

  “Mr. Chambers?” It’s the doorman.

  “Yes, Brandon?”

  “There’s a Josie Mitchell to see you.”

  Joe just looks at the buzzer. Is he ready for this? Can he handle it?

  “Mr. Chambers? Are you there?”

  “Yes, Brandon. Send her up.”

  “God. You look terrible.”

  “Thanks, Josie. You look wonderful, but what else is new?” Joe turns and walks back into the living room, Josie following him as anger finally threatens to show itself in her voice.

  “Joe, what the hell is going on? You left to get breakfast and never came back. Your mobile phone’s been switched off for four days, you haven’t been at work, and you haven’t returned any of my calls. And you look awful. What’s happened?”

  Joe shrugs and smiles. “If you must know, my marriage is over.”

  Josie’s eyes widen, but she doesn’t say anything. What, after all, can she say? How awful for you? I’m so sorry? Hooray?

  “So that’s why I’ve been at home,” Joe continues. “I’m sorry, Jose, I should have called, but it’s taken me a bit of time to adjust, and if you must know the truth I’ve been feeling a bit shit. I mean, it’s not every day your wife finds out about an affair and kicks you out.”

  “Oh.” Josie sits down hard on the sofa. “She found out about us?”

  “Yup. She found our e-mails. But she didn’t even seem to care. She said it hadn’t been working for a while and neither of us were happy and there wasn’t any point.”

  “And is that true?” Josie speaks quietly, well aware she is treading on dangerous territory, and not quite sure how to play it, this situation being entirely new to her. It was one thing being a mistress, but quite another being a mistress who split up a marriage. Although she couldn’t help but feel a thrill at Joe finally being single and available for her, she could see it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. She could see that Joe was far more devastated than he was letting on.

  Joe shrugs. “Yes, it’s true. The marriage has been a farce since we came to New York. Actually it was probably a farce for a lot longer, according to Alice, but apparently we have nothing in common anymore and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Oh, fuck, I don’t know. I feel like shit . . . I feel fantastic . . . she’s right . . . the marriage wasn’t working . . . but it used to work so maybe it could again . . . maybe we just need time . . . maybe I’ve been a bastard . . . maybe Alice shouldn’t have changed so much . . . I’m probably not the type to be married . . . we were wrong for one another . . . fuck knows . . . I don’t know.”

  “Okay.” Josie stands up. She’d come over because she was concerned, and angry, but she wasn’t prepared to deal with this. She doesn’t know how she feels about this herself, and she knows she’s probably the worst person to be around Joe right now. The best thing she can do, particularly if her own relationship with him stands any chance at all, is to leave him alone, let him work this out himself. “I shouldn’t have come over. I’m sorry. I’m going to go now.”

  “No!” Joe panics, instantly regressing to a lost little boy. He’s lost one woman this past week; he’s not prepared to lose another. There are many things Joe can deal with, but rejection is not one of them, and two rejections would be too much. “No,” he says in a more gentle voice, walking over to Josie and taking her face in his hands. “Please stay with me,” he says urgently, looking into her eyes as she drops her bag on the floor. “I need you, Jose. I want you. Don’t leave me.”

  “Okay,” she whispers, as she folds him into her arms. “Don’t worry,” she croons, stroking his back and whispering into his neck. “I’m here. It’s all going to be okay.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to fly out?” Emily’s voice is filled with concern. “I can, you know. Work’s not that busy, and you shouldn’t be on your own.”

  “Oh, Em, thank you. But no. I actually feel as if I do need this time on my own. I need to sort out my head, just think everything through. But thank you. And thank you for being there for me.”

  These past few days Alice and Emily have spoken four, five times a day. Neither has forgotten the reason for their lack of communication since New Year’s Eve, but Emily has forgiven, has forgotten why it ever seemed so important that she risked losing her best friend.

  “So are you completely sure you’re okay? How do you feel?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel relieved, and I know I’ve done the right thing. We hardly even spoke toward the end, we j
ust had nothing to talk about, and I don’t even remember the last time we made one another laugh. I’d go into the city and resent him for trying to turn me into something I’m not, and he’d come down here and hate me for not being what he wanted.

  “I feel so happy that I don’t have to go into Manhattan anymore and stand next to Joe making boring small talk with the boring wife of one of his clients, and then five minutes later I’m terrified. I can’t believe that I’m going to be a divorcée, that I’m never going to wake up and see Joe lying next to me. That there isn’t anyone to stand up for me, or step in for me, or take over when things get too difficult.”

  “I know,” Emily says. “That’s the bastard about being single. You have to do everything yourself. But on the plus side, you haven’t got anyone telling you what to do. You can eat Ben & Jerry’s for breakfast, lunch, and supper if you want.”

  Alice snorts. “If you want what? If you want to grow into the size of a house?”

  “Okay, not Ben & Jerry’s. How about Baskin & Robbins sugar-free chocolate mint ice cream then? Better?”

  Alice laughs. “Much.”

  “See? You can still laugh. And there’s much more you can do besides. You can have lie-ins every day. You can garden twenty-four hours without someone moaning that they want you to cook dinner, or you have to go shopping with them, or you have to go and meet people you don’t want to meet for lunch.”

  “True. I know. Those are all the things I tell myself when I’m feeling good about it.”

  “And when you’re not feeling good about it?”

  “Then I tell myself that I’m terrified and I’ll never be able to make it on my own. Oh God, Em. I just can’t believe it’s come to this. I walked down that aisle thinking I was going to be married for the rest of my life. I thought Joe and I would grow old together.”

  Emily is silent for a few seconds. “Alice, you walked down that aisle knowing who Joe was, what he wanted in a wife. You were willing to turn yourself into what he wanted. That’s why your marriage worked.”