Altered States Read online

  ‘We could go down to the cottage,’ I said. ‘You could finish the curtains.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I could do. I’m not well.’

  ‘Angela,’ I said gently. ‘Please come home. Come back to me.’ There was no answer. ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘I fell, didn’t I? I fell in the kitchen.’

  ‘Why did you fall? What happened?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I’m tired now. Please go.’

  And indeed she suddenly looked tired, as if her memory had snagged on something uncomfortable, unmanageable. The sense of her words did not come back to me for a very long while, and even when they did I tried my best to ignore them.

  Now that I have so much time I ask myself what blind biological urge prompted her to avail herself of a partner, and then, when the obligations of marriage were forced on her, to renounce the entire condition, as being too much for a still childish temperament. I had always known that she was immature, but had not understood that her immaturity was limitless. I understand now that there are women whose fear of men will always hinder their understanding of them, and will, of course, occlude their sympathy for them. Such women need men as a support, a protection, but they can offer only minimal support in return. Angela would quite probably have felt more comfortable with an older man, even an old man, one who would cherish her, but not threaten her with penetration. I have seen such couples, the husband, no doubt impotent, babying his wife and delighting masochistically in her tantrums and caprices. Such play-acting, which is appalling to witness, is a necessary part of their transaction. If Angela had entered such a union her tendency to regress would have been legitimised. But precisely because she was a healthy young woman she had harboured certain ineradicable desires, certain archaic wishes, and with the unthinking force of nature had set her sights on a partner of similar age and physical appearance. Unfortunately such impulses died once the conquest had been achieved. The white wedding dress, the marquee on the lawn of her mother’s house, had marked the conclusion of the exercise.

  I did not accept this explanation for a long time, although it would have flattered me to do so. What it did throw light on was my fascination with a woman whose characteristics and whose modus operandi were precisely the opposite of those which delineated Angela. Sarah was not a particularly likeable woman; she was, in addition, inarticulate and unreliable. But she was not afraid of men. She was not necessarily dishonest in her dealings with them. She was their equal, as shifty and as elemental as are most men in their dealings with women. When she had wanted me it was without subterfuge; she had no personal plans which involved taking me over, subjugating me in order to pacify or neutralise some unresolved conflict in herself. She thus represented a vista of freedom, no doubt entirely illusory, although the illusion may have been that of her partner, in this case myself. Yet she had not waited for me. It was precisely because she had not waited for me that I had been tempted to pursue her. Whereas Angela’s pursuit of me, which I had thought touching, had yielded little more than passing satisfaction for either of us, Sarah exerted no effort whatever. What Angela saw now was a husband to whom she was not only indifferent but nearly hostile. With the social satisfactions of her marriage inevitably declining, with a body which had been physically altered, her fantasy was eclipsed. Perhaps the involvement had always been with herself, rather than with a companion. Her friendships had been fleeting, founded on suspicion. I had early on in our life together come to see that she trusted no one who treated her as an equal. She accepted protection, mine included, and if she had entered my life in the first place it was because I was weak and ill and could do her no harm. Once I was returned to life and health she knew that I would threaten her dangerously precarious equilibrium. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  My life, as I left the hospital each evening, was illuminated only by the faintest glimmers of insight. Anything more explicit would have constituted yet another disloyalty. In any event I had more practical matters to consider. When I had returned to the flat I had found it in a state of disarray which I had not previously noticed, although it must have been deteriorating for some time. Perhaps the over-bright discipline of the hospital had left me unprepared for the layer of dust in the bedroom, and the shiny marks on the kitchen floor, as if something had been spilled and carelessly wiped away. Perhaps this was why Angela had fallen, although she normally spent little time in the kitchen, leaving it to Adelina, and latterly to Jenny. There was a smell of stale cooking, though no cooking had been undertaken when I was away: on the table was a half-eaten bowl of cornflakes, soggy with bluish milk. In the bedroom the bed was unmade.

  I was alarmed by this neglect since it suggested that in my absence Angela was disinclined to care for the flat she had once cherished. I cleaned up as best I could, changed the bed, and parcelled up the dirty sheets for the laundry. I opened the windows wide, though it was a damp and misty evening, and made myself a cup of milkless tea. It occurred to me that I was not going to be able to manage on my own. My grief, which was profound, had drained me of energy, even of the desire to bring matters to a successful resolution. Indeed, I did not see how this could be done. We had more or less admitted that our marriage was over, yet now more than ever was I obliged to remain married and to care for my wife. I saw us declining into one of those awful conspiracies in which one partner becomes the souffre-douleur of the other, the situation only, accepted—and tolerated—because of that inexpungible guilt for which there is neither forgiveness nor indeed excuse.

  I would cherish and protect Angela, largely because I had betrayed her, and she would make use of me precisely for that reason. This state of affairs would have obtained even without the tragedy of the baby’s death. With the instinct possessed by the insecure and the suspicious she knew that, given the choice and the opportunity, I would prefer another woman. It hardly mattered that she had no proof that the other woman was Sarah; it hardly mattered that I had only left her for one night. What mattered to her now was to engineer her return to victim status and to punish me. I accepted my punishment because I felt that I deserved her resentment. I could only hope that with the passage of time that resentment would change into indifference. One thing caused me intense pain: I should never have a child. Angela would not consider it, and I could not blame her. My light-mindedness had unfitted me for the role of father. This she knew and even welcomed.

  In the meantime there was the problem of how we were to live. Clearly we could not do so without an intermediary. Angela would take some time to recover, and should not be condemned to recover on her own. She had lost touch with most of her friends, and her mother was a broken reed. It was then, with none of my former reluctance, that I thought of Jenny, although I doubted whether she would look favourably on my request for her renewed attendance. She was away, I knew; I did not know when she was expected back. I decided to wait until the weekend. I would delay Angela’s return until the Sunday night, and make my call then. I was sure that Jenny would respond to Angela’s need, not so sure that she would respond to mine. I only knew that some sort of temporary solution must be found and I could think of no other.

  We were obliged to spend one night alone together before Jenny could come to the rescue, which would be on the following day. That one night was enough to emphasize our estrangement. Angela insisted on my moving my things into the spare room, and it was clear that she intended to spend her time in bed, both day and night. When my exhortations fell on deaf ears I gave up. I thought it ignoble that a woman in these enlightened times should retreat into a form of voluntary invalidism, and I began to view my wife dispassionately, as if she were a character in a play, rather than as someone who was my partner for life. Of her post-natal depression I could see no sign: what I did see was a form of passive derangement. I think it was clear to me even at that stage that she did not intend to get much better. Intent on one of her novels, occasionally humming under her breath, she paid me no attention whatever, except to say, ‘I’
m tired,’ or, ‘Leave me alone. You don’t know how I feel.’

  ‘You must get up, darling,’ I would urge.

  ‘When I’m better.’

  ‘But you are better. You’re perfectly all right.’

  ‘I’m still weak.’

  ‘You’ll get even weaker, lying in bed.’

  ‘Leave me alone. You don’t know how I feel.’

  It was therefore with relief that I welcomed the presence of a third person, with something like gratitude that I accepted my portion of stuffed cabbage, or some cabbage derivative—living at the Hôtel du Départ had not done much for Jenny’s cooking—leaving the two conspirators in Angela’s bedroom with the door firmly shut against me. For they were conspirators, the motherless child and the childless mother, engaged in a monstrous pantomime of filial and maternal affection. While I saw Jenny’s presence as inevitable, I also came to see it as malign, at least in its effect on Angela. I would leave her in the morning still in bed; this I acquiesced to as being within the limits of normality. I would return home in the evening to find her in bed again—or still—her hair newly brushed, a suspicion of make-up on her face, but all this for her own benefit rather than for mine. Jenny, apparently in the best of spirits, would greet me warmly, our previous misunderstandings forgiven and forgotten. She would assure me that Angela had had a good day, but that she must not get overtired.

  ‘Perhaps if you could encourage her to get up and go out, Jenny? You both used to enjoy going out …’

  ‘She’s not ready for that, Alan. I don’t think you understand what she’s been through.’

  ‘But that’s all over. It was very sad, for me too …’

  ‘It’s always worse for a woman. If you want to sit with her don’t stay too long. I want to give her her pill before I go.’

  For Jenny was both mother and nurse, though I had to keep reminding myself that Angela was a young woman with no known disease but an apparently inexhaustible desire for guardianship. Both were united in a distaste for men which in Angela’s case, and perhaps in Jenny’s too, had hardened into alienation. I did not intend to add Jenny’s case history to my repertoire: I merely noted that she had probably viewed her marriage as Angela had done, as a release from obscurity, a legitimation. Now, apparently, she had found a new métier as surrogate mother, a role in which she blossomed, to judge from her bright eyes and assumption of control, or empowerment, as the rather useful word describes it. She would arrive every day at about two o’clock, bearing in her shopping bag certain delicacies for Angela and something that she had cooked the previous evening and which I would eat for dinner. We were thus assured of nourishment, even if it were not wholly to our taste, or rather to mine. Another of Angela’s worrying symptoms was her refusal to eat what I thought of as grown-up food, that is to say lunch or dinner. She existed wholly on ephemera, nursery foods presented to her on a tray by myself in the morning, before I left for work, and Jenny in the evening before she left. This diet was probably sufficient for one who spent her days in bed, but it added to an increasing process of infantilisation. Also I suspected Jenny of indulging these tastes, and even adding to them, with cakes brought from the pâtisserie she patronised, and which she appeared to enjoy by proxy, having denied herself the pleasures of the table in the interests of her figure.

  I viewed this partnership with the purest horror. I dreaded my return home in the evenings, when I would busy myself with the washing-machine and the Hoover, for Jenny, naturally enough, would undertake no household duties, and in addition, or perhaps as a further sign of lack of interest, would leave the kitchen untidied. Her curatorship was markedly partisan, though to be fair I think she acted innocently. Certainly she was free from malice. She was simply obeying some blind impulse not only to serve, but to protect, and in this particular scenario I was the unacknowledged threat. Their two views of the situation exactly coincided. Of my own feelings, my own sadness, there was no acknowledgement. This hurt me greatly, since I had too much pride, or too much guilt, to proffer my situation for their perusal.

  ‘Everything all right at home?’ Brian would say. ‘Getting on all right, is she?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ I would answer. I knew that he was not deceived, but I was not about to make a bid for his sympathy.

  ‘Perhaps you’d both come to dinner,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Felicity to give Angela a ring.’

  ‘I should leave it for a bit,’ I told him, and told him more than once. ‘She still gets very tired.’

  ‘You should take her away,’ people urged. ‘A change of scene would work wonders. For you both,’ they said, these kind people, neighbours, colleagues, for although no complaint had ever passed my lips I had lost weight, no longer appeared as presentable as I had formerly done, and was frequently sleepless. At night, in the spare room, I wept, stifling the sounds in my pillow. To my horror we both appeared to be going downhill and I seemed to have lost the will or the capacity to put matters right.

  It was a momentary insight into my own condition that emboldened me to speak firmly to Jenny on one particularly harassing evening. I knew that what I was doing was reckless, but I was tired and hungry for normality. I took her by the arm and led her into the sitting-room, where Angela could not overhear us. Under the stark centre light we were accuser and accused.

  ‘This can’t go on, Jenny,’ I said. ‘You’re making her into an invalid.’

  ‘She is an invalid, Alan. You don’t understand …’

  ‘She’s a perfectly healthy woman who refuses to get out of bed, and you’re encouraging her.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You’re indulging her, Jenny. This is folie à deux.’

  ‘I see,’ she repeated, with some hauteur. ‘Thank you very much, Alan.’

  ‘Of course I can never thank you enough for your kindness.’

  ‘So you’re telling me to leave.’

  ‘Jenny, do understand. I want my wife back.’

  ‘Do you?’ She looked slyly. ‘You were after Sarah, weren’t you?’ For an instant a younger, more speculative woman considered me, a hint of irony in the faded blue eyes. ‘Did you see Sarah? Did you see her in Paris?’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t.’

  I could feel the flush of shame creeping all over my body. I bundled Jenny roughly into the hall, fetched her coat and her shopping bag, and opened the front door. She stared at me, while various half-formed suspicions grew in her mind. My further guilt was thus firmly established, and, what was worse, was acknowledged by two people. I no longer knew how guilty I was. All I knew was that I should never again feel innocent. I now see that age would bring about this change in any case. Then I was merely aware of a feeling of entrapment. That, of course, is what guilt really resembles, the blind alley of one’s own consciousness, with no alleviation either from another person or from oneself.

  ‘You don’t want me to come tomorrow, then?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  I forced myself to kiss her on both cheeks, hoping that this would urge her on her way. Her final humility maddened me. She should have been angry, she should have accused me—I longed for such accusations to be out in the open—but she chose to smile and look at me with an uncertain expression on her face. Then, ‘She takes her pill in about an hour’s time.’

  ‘I’ll remember. Thank you, Jenny.’

  I marched in to Angela, and said, ‘You can stay there for now, but tomorrow you are getting up. And you’d better be prepared to pull your weight again. Jenny won’t be coming any more.’

  She stared at me. ‘But I can’t do without her.’

  ‘You can and you will. Believe me, this is all for the best.’

  But she took no notice, turned her face to the pillow, and began to cry like a child.

  ‘Don’t forget to take your pill,’ I said, and left her.

  This continued for three weeks. Angela wept and I exhorted. She remained in bed, and soon her hair and her nightdress began to look untended. I bought prepared di
shes from Marks and Spencer which she ate greedily and carelessly, like an old lady or a very young child, the corners of her mouth gleaming with sauce. Then she would apply a thick layer of lipstick, she who had used so little. Streaks of old make-up appeared on the pillow; the room began to smell. She refused to let me near her, even to change the sheets. I called the doctor, who was non-committal and said he would look in again. One freezing night I staggered into the spare room, dropped my clothes on the floor, and fell into a deep sleep. That was the night that Angela took the rest of her pills. She was dead when I went in to her the next morning. There was no note. That my poor girl had decided that she wanted nothing further to do with me was my final punishment.

  12

  It was Aubrey who suggested, or rather who strongly recommended, that I go away. ‘This has broken your mother’s heart,’ he said consolingly. Mine too, I reminded him. He considered me, as if weighing the sincerity of my words, then, having perhaps decided that I was, for a very brief moment, to be trusted, his expression softened.

  ‘We must all recover as best we can,’ he said. ‘I’ll look after Alice, of course. Don’t worry about her. Worry about yourself, but worry constructively. Get some exercise, some decent food. I know the place for you—I used to go there myself when I was out of sorts. It’s a place called Vif, on the border between France and Switzerland. There’s very little to do there but walk and sleep, and that’s just the sort of thing you need. They know me quite well there. If you like I’ll give Monsieur Pach at the hotel a ring. In fact you can leave the whole thing to me, tickets, hotel, currency. I’ll drop them into the office; that’ll save you a bit of time.’

  For he was anxious to get rid of me, not because he disliked me, but because I was associated with disaster. He was, for a man of his relative sophistication, surprisingly superstitious. I saw that look on other faces: the hastily lowered gaze turned resolutely into one of cordial sincerity, the caution of the approach—could it possibly be avoided?—and the neutral, numb-seeming words of condolence. I had become an embarrassment, even an irritation, and my presence was not welcome.