Love You Madly

Finally, at about eight o’clock, I hear the front door open. I feel my heart stretch and skip a beat in anticipation.

‘It’s me,’ calls Anna from the hall.

I get up to greet her. She is hanging up her coat. ‘Hello you,’ she says. I kiss her on the cheek. We walk into the kitchen. Anna sits down at the table and lights a cigarette.

‘So,’ she says. ‘Come on. Tell me everything. What was it like?’

‘What was what like?’

‘Don’t be a tease, Matthew. Seeing your book on the shelves. All that stuff. Did you see anyone buy a copy?’

I sigh. ‘Actually, they didn’t have any.’

Anna looks at me. ‘None?’

‘None.’

‘Oh.’

‘They told me that they’d never heard of me, they hadn’t ordered any copies, and they weren’t going to. It wasn’t exactly the most electrifying start to my career.’

‘Oh, sweetheart. I’m sorry.’ Anna takes a long drag of her cigarette. ‘Have you told Neville?’

I shake my head. ‘He’ll probably be delighted.’

‘Well, don’t worry. It’s only one bookshop, after all. There are plenty more out there.’

‘Hmm,’ I reply doubtfully.

‘How was the rest of your day?’ she asks. ‘What progress on the next masterpiece?’

I think guiltily of my solitary paragraph. ‘Actually, it’s hard going at the moment. I’m struggling with some of the characters.’

Anna grins. ‘Are they not doing what they’re told? Naughty characters.’

I shift uncomfortably. ‘Something like that. The main character, right, Illic –’

‘Illic?’ snorts Anna. ‘What sort of name is that?’

I pause. ‘It’s Eastern European.’

‘Eastern European?’ Anna looks at me strangely. ‘What do you know about Eastern Europe?’

‘Enough,’ I stammer. Actually, I know nothing about Eastern Europe. But everyone accepts that nowadays serious fiction tends to be about Eastern Europeans. The only authors who still write about English characters are people like Bernadette Brannigan, because neither she nor her readers have the wit or imagination to understand how parochial and mundane it all is. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, you have the lingering spectre of Communism, lots of war, unpronounceable names, and grittily authentic characters who have not been spiritually disembowelled by the capitalist excesses of Western civilisation. It’s the perfect setting if you want to say anything relevant.

There is a pause. ‘So, go on then,’ prompts Anna. ‘About this guy Illic. Tell me more.’

‘Oh. Well, it’s difficult to explain. He’s a very complex character.’ As he would be, coming from Eastern Europe. ‘But at the moment he’s, er, subverting the author-character dialectic.’

Anna pulls a face. ‘Sounds serious.’

‘Oh, I’ll soon knock him into shape.’ There is a pause. I look at my wife anxiously. I decide to wait until after supper before I ask her about the cufflinks. ‘Hungry?’ I ask.

‘Ravenous. What are we having?’

‘Well, just for a change, I thought I might have a go at chicken.’

Anna gasps. ‘Chicken? Surely not.’

‘I’ll get started, then.’ I stand up.

Anna remains where she is, looking at the ashtray in front of her. ‘Matthew,’ she says after a moment, ‘I have some news.’

I am crouching in front of the open fridge, a blue polystyrene tray of chicken breasts in my hand. Slowly I stand and turn to face her.

‘News?’ I say uncertainly.

‘We need to talk,’ she says.

‘Talk?’

‘Something’s happened, Matthew. I’m leaving.’

I have misheard her. Surely.

‘What did you say?’ I breathe.

Anna sighs. ‘I have to go. I have no choice. I’m sorry.’

So this is it. A scythe of gut-wrenching nausea rips through me. I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t expecting this. Anna is leaving me. Just like that. My head is filled with shrill panic. I realise that she is still speaking.

‘…until about the end of the week. Mind you, it could be worse.’

I stare at her.

Anna looks at me quizzically. ‘Is that OK? I know it’s not ideal, but I thought maybe you could do with some time to yourself. You can crack on with the book.’

I shake my head. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Run it by me again.’ I put the tray of chicken breasts down on the kitchen table. My over-anxious thumb-print is clearly indented against the cool flesh of the meat.

Anna sighs. ‘Do you ever listen to me, Matthew? I have to go to Paris. On business. That pharmaceutical client I told you about.’

Paris. Business. I nod blindly. The edict has been handed down, gubernatorial discretion exercised. Clemency has been granted! I am escaping the noose, skipping away from the electric chair!

‘I have to leave tomorrow,’ continues Anna. ‘The deal should be done by the end of the week. Although you never know with the French.’

Ah, yes, the French.

Inevitably, the very mention of our garlic-chomping cousins from across the Channel sends me into a spin. The genesis of my neurosis was one Frenchman in particular, but as the years have passed my antipathy has spread to the whole lot of them.

I should explain.

A statistic that one hears from time to time on true-crime television shows is that in eighty per cent of all murder cases, the murderer and the victim know each other.

I sometimes wonder how police statisticians will categorise my crime, when I exact my longed-for revenge on Jean-Philippe Durand. Will they say we knew each other? I, the assassin, know the victim intimately. Too well. He has haunted my dreams for years. Conversely, when I step out of the shadows, my stiletto blade poised to be driven into his heart, he will look at me blankly. Which is a pity, really, because I won’t have time to explain to him exactly why it is that he must die.

Allow me to spool back fourteen years, or thereabouts:

October time. I had recently arrived at one of Oxford University’s less prestigious colleges, looking forward to an indolent three years of studying English. When I realised just how cheap the beer in the college bar was, I resolved to bluff my way through the entire syllabus. Within days of my arrival, unshakeable slothfulness had settled comfortably upon me like a high tog duvet. I spent the days eroding my paltry student grant twenty pence at a time, trying to beat the high score on the college pinball machine. I spent the evenings drinking with my friend Ian. We had met on the first day of term. Recognising in each other a shared depravity, we dispensed with the cautious friendliness that typified most new encounters in those first days of term. We didn’t bother with the usual preliminary small talk, timidly splashing around in the shallow end of the conversational swimming pool. Instead we dived right in to the heavy, do-or-die stuff, and it turned out that we both thought that ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’ by the Dead Kennedys was the best song ever. Suddenly we were best friends.

(Actually, I lied about the Dead Kennedys. At the time my favourite record was ‘Such Sweet Thunder’, Duke Ellington’s Shakespeare-inspired jazz suite, but I knew that there were occasions when honesty had to be sacrificed for expediency.)

The inevitable descent into puerile loutishness followed. We spent most evenings in the college bar, drinking ourselves stupid. We liked to sit near the door so that we could ogle at all the women who came in. After the barren hinterlands of Hertfordshire, I looked on, agog. The self-confidence, pulchritude and sheer numbers of the females on display left me breathless. One evening Ian and I were sitting in our usual spot when the door opened and a girl walked in.

Whatever it is that triggers the delicious chemical imbalance in our brains that makes us stupid with infatuation, it happened to me just then. Just like that, without warning. I fell in love on the spot. Literally. All of the other girls were instantly eclipsed, fading into lifeless daguerreotypes. In contrast, this girl shone in glorious, crisply focused Technicolor. As I stared at her, I could feel the fissure cracking deep within me as her face carved itself indelibly on to my consciousness. From then on I was branded, a marked man.

The girl wasn’t wearing any make-up. She didn’t need to: her face was radiant, even in the smoky penumbra of the subterranean bar. Looking at her, it was as if someone had opened a window and let the sunshine in.

She was wearing a pair of fantastically tight jeans and a pink twin-set affair which seemed impossibly classy amidst the surrounding sea of Next jumpers and Hard Rock Café T-shirts. She had, patently, the body of a goddess. Her hair was blonde and straight, cut to just below her shoulder. Her black boots emerged alluringly from the bottom of her jeans in an unspeakably erotic way. They tapered from her elegant ankles to mean-looking points. Those boots were foxy. They just looked like trouble.

My mouth hanging open, I watched the girl walk towards the bar until she disappeared into the scrum of bodies. Stunned, I turned to Ian. His mouth was hanging open, too.

‘Holy fucking shit,’ I said.

There was a brief debate about tactics.

‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ said Ian, taking a coin out of his pocket. ‘Heads you go, tails I go.’

I gulped. Surely I wasn’t going to stake all of my future happiness on the toss of a coin? ‘OK,’ I said after a moment. If it was tails, I reasoned, I would go anyway.

Ian spun the coin and caught it on the back of his left hand, covering it with his right. He slowly lifted his fingers, hiding the coin from my view. I saw his face fall. ‘Best of three?’ he said tentatively, but I was already out of my chair, striding after her.

Now, I wouldn’t want you to think that I was some sort of silver-tongued ladies’ man. Quite the opposite, in fact: usually in such circumstances I would be an awkwardly stammering wreck. But this was an unusual situation.

I found the girl standing by the bar. And miracle of miracles, she was alone. I stood next to her, deliberately looking the other way. With fumbling fingers I lit a cigarette. Slowly I counted to five, and then pretended to notice her for the first time. I cocked a cool eyebrow.

‘Hi,’ I murmured, exhaling meaningfully through my nose. Unfortunately I was recovering from a bad cold, and the smoke shot out of my one functioning nostril in a single, lopsided plume.

‘Hello,’ said the girl neutrally.

‘I’m Matt,’ I said.

She looked at me appraisingly. ‘I’m Anna.’

‘Well, hello, Anna.’ I stuck my hand out towards her, pleased with how well this was going. She shook my hand with an amused glint in her eye, which I judiciously decided to ignore. I gestured towards the bar. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘No thanks,’ she answered. ‘I’m not staying. Just waiting for someone.’

She did try to warn me, you see, but I sailed resolutely on past the bank of flashing hazard lights, heroically oblivious. Waiting for someone? Pah!

‘So tell me, Anna,’ I said, ‘what are you studying?’ I leaned back against the bar, neatly sticking my elbow into a puddle of spilt beer.

‘Law,’ she replied flatly, cocking her head to one side as she lit a cigarette. (Anna has always been a fantastic smoker. She smokes in an effortlessly glamorous way, as if it’s still the Sixties. I, on the other hand, just puff away artlessly, with no panache, no drama.)

‘Law? Really?’ I hoped that the crippling intellectual and sexual intimidation that I was now experiencing was not manifesting itself too obviously. ‘Wow,’ I said anxiously.

There was a pause. ‘What about you?’ she asked.

‘Me?’ I shrugged nonchalantly. ‘English, actually.’

Anna nodded, apparently not surprised.

I felt my armpits prickle with sweat. I looked down at my cigarette, and tried to compose my thoughts. ‘So anyway –’

‘Hello.’ Suddenly, the most beautiful man I had ever seen was standing next to us. Dark, curly hair fell over his eyes in a messily random way that I cattily estimated must have taken him at least thirty minutes to get just right. He could have balanced a small sherry glass on each of his cheekbones, which jutted out from a texturally flawless face. He had dark green eyes, and his chiselled jaw-line was more gracefully contoured than the leg of a Rodin nude. He smiled at me, revealing absolutely perfect teeth.

This was bad; but then things got unspeakably worse.

‘Hi sweetie,’ said Anna – and then she kissed him. My fantasy world imploded messily.

‘Having fun?’ said the man in heavily accented English.

‘This is – I’m sorry, I’ve completely forgotten your name.’

Anna hadn’t just forgotten my name; oh no. She had completely forgotten it. I stuck out my hand towards the man. ‘Matt Moore,’ I said.

‘Jean-Philippe Durand,’ he replied.

‘You’re French,’ I said cleverly.

Jean-Philippe Durand looked at me. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It is.’

‘Jean-Philippe is here for a year on a scholarship,’ explained Anna brightly.

‘Golly,’ I said hollowly. ‘Congratulations.’ My soul had begun to shred itself into tiny, forlorn pieces.

Jean-Philippe Durand inclined his head slightly. ‘Thank you. Matt.’ Was that a small sneer?

Anna looked at her watch. ‘We should be going.’

‘Off anywhere nice?’ I asked, not wanting to let her out of my sight.

‘The cinema,’ she answered. ‘Jean-Philippe insists that only the French make decent films. We decided to put his theory to the test. Yesterday we saw a Truffaut, and today it’s my turn. We’re going to watch The Third Man, which was directed by Carol Reed. Then we’ll see if he still stands by his theory.’ She grinned archly at Jean-Philippe, who had not taken his beautiful eyes off me.

I nodded, hopelessly out of my depth. ‘Ah, the great Carol Reed. One of my personal favourites, funnily enough. I think she’s wonderful.’

Disconcertingly, Anna frowned at me for a moment, then decided I was joking and laughed politely. ‘We really should be going,’ she said again.

‘Well, it was nice to meet you both,’ I said. ‘Have a great time.’

‘We will,’ said Jean-Philippe Durand with such unflappable certainty that I wanted to punch him on his beautifully sculpted nose.

‘Bye,’ said Anna, flashing me a heartbreaking smile before grabbing Jean-Philippe’s hand and turning to go out of the bar.

And that was that.

That wasn’t that, of course.

The reason why Jean-Philippe Durand will not remember me, why his brow will furrow as he sees my blade swoop down towards him in that darkened side street, is because we never spoke to each other again.

After my humiliation at the bar, I began to brood hopelessly. Anna rapidly developed into a fully-fledged obsession. All other thought or action was suddenly pretty much impossible, and pretty much meaningless. I was hopelessly in love. I spent hours staring longingly out of my window, which gave me a terrific view of the bins at the back of the college kitchens, wistfully contemplating what might have been. Rather than doing the sensible thing and forgetting about Anna by chasing after any of the hundreds of other nubile young female undergraduates, I decided to remain chaste, loyal to the girl of my dreams. I was, rather speculatively, saving myself for her.

In the meantime, I watched Anna and Jean-Philippe parade around the college, holding hands and whispering in each other’s ears. The innocent tenderness that the two of them displayed towards each other in public didn’t fool me for a moment. I knew they were at it all the time. Dirty bastards, the pair of them. They were shagging as if it were the end of the world, with wanton, lustful, pornographic abandon. I just knew it.

It was around this time that I started to write seriously, and I suppose in a way I have Jean-Philippe to thank for it. I sat down one afternoon, intending to compose a tragic love poem to Anna. The idea was that when she read it she would realise just how sensitive I was; she would then dump Jean-Philippe, pledge her heart to me for eternity, and we would live happily ever after. After thirty minutes of doodling I gave up on that idea and instead wrote a terrible and rather bleak short story which culminated in the grisly death of every single character, all of whom happened to be French.

I showed the story to Ian. He sat on my bed and read it in silence.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

‘I think it’s quite good,’ replied Ian.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘I also think,’ he continued, ‘that you need help.’

I nodded. ‘It’s just a first draft.’

‘No.’ Ian shook his head. ‘Not with the writing. With you.’ He waved my story at me and tapped his finger against the side of his head. ‘You are one sick puppy.’

Encouraged, I began to write in earnest. The one leitmotif in all my work at that time was the gruesome demise of a good-looking Frenchman at the end of each story. In this way I killed Jean-Philippe Durand off several times, exacting revenge for the misery he had unwittingly heaped upon me. He was crushed, poisoned, shot, asphyxiated, garrotted, drowned, buried alive, exsanguinated, dismembered, hanged, electrocuted, cannibalised, starved to death, beheaded, pushed in front of an oncoming train, disembowelled, and crucified. As I reached the gory climax of each story, my handwriting would degenerate into an illegible scrawl as I rushed gleefully towards the coup de grâce, cackling maniacally as I did so.

Like Ian said, one sick puppy.

It wasn’t a good year.

I spent unhealthy amounts of time hanging around the college quads, waiting for a sighting of the happy couple. I would gaze at them wordlessly, my heart beating blackly as my envy of Jean-Philippe flourished and developed into fully-fledged hatred. Looking back on it now, I can see that he wasn’t really doing anything wrong. But that was irrelevant. He was having sex with the woman I loved. That was quite enough.

I couldn’t bring myself to approach either of them. Occasionally I would pass Anna as I scuttled through college, but she showed no signs of recognising me after my artless overtures in the college bar. The obvious thing to do was to stay away, but I couldn’t help myself. I kept going back for more, quietly crucifying myself.

Finally, the summer holidays arrived. I escaped back home, and spent three months lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the summer to end. I was unable to think of anything but my return to Oxford, and the chance to see Anna again. I couldn’t wait to inflict more pain on myself.

When we reconvened for the new academic year, Jean-Philippe Durand had returned to Paris, leaving the way open for me to try my luck with Anna again. It took several false starts before I summoned up enough courage to speak to her. Thankfully she didn’t remember our earlier encounter. I did, though. Remembering Truffaut and Carol Reed, I started chatting to her about movies, hoping to catch her interest. It worked. After our trip to see Citizen Kane and a successful dinner date a few days later, we began to see each other regularly. Every time we arranged to meet, I blinked in amazement when Anna actually appeared, clutching her thick, brightly coloured legal textbooks. This was really happening; Anna was walking down the narrow Oxford streets on her way back from the law faculty, thinking about me. Her smiles as we shyly greeted each other stunned me into delirious, weak-kneed awe. I spun with happiness, fizzing with the ceaseless, internal momentum of my raging ardour. My arm was blue from disbelieving pinches.

Unfortunately, though, the damage had already been done.

Long after Jean-Philippe Durand had waltzed out of my life, I found myself unable to stop thinking about him, even once Anna and I had begun our own romantic adventure. A year of all-consuming jealousy proved difficult to shake off. His presence lingered on, casting a pall over my happiness. Those perfect teeth haunted me. That alluring French accent kept whispering in my ear: She could have been mine. His mesmerising eyes twinkled on in my memory, tormenting me. I couldn’t shake the ghastly suspicion that I was merely Anna’s compromise candidate. Jean-Philippe had gone, and I was the runner’s-up prize, second best.

In this way the Frenchman left an indelible stain on the crisp white sheet of our romance, an ineradicable reminder of our lives before Anna and I came together. Our fairy tale had been tarnished before it had even begun. That is why, one day, I will wreak my terrible revenge on him.

Of course, Anna knows nothing of all this, even now. I couldn’t bring myself to admit my disquiet to her at the time, terrified that if I even mentioned Jean-Philippe’s name, she would suddenly realise that I was second best, and go straight back to him. Instead I suffered in silence, and the more my suspicions festered, the more impossible it became to broach the subject. Finally I understood that if I was ever to escape Jean-Philippe Durand’s insidious clutches, I would have to do it on my own.

And, who knows? Perhaps, one day, I will.

So, it has been decided. Anna is off to France. She leaves tomorrow morning.

After supper, she spends the rest of the evening packing, unpacking, and repacking. I sit on the end of the bed, watching. As she folds her clothes carefully into the suitcase, she tells me that she will be staying at the Hotel Léon, near the Louvre. She is travelling to Paris with three of her colleagues, Andy, Graham and Richard. They are, she says, all lovely chaps. They enjoy a laugh, good food, that sort of thing, so I mustn’t worry that she will be spending the evenings sitting alone and bored in her hotel room. Far from it. They will, she informs me with a grin, be painting the town a fabulous shade of rouge. I nod, blinking.

A taxi to Waterloo is ordered for the morning; we have a final glass of wine and go to bed. Anna wordlessly turns out her bedside light and pulls the duvet over her, leaving me propped up on an expectant elbow. So. There will be no drink before the war. She leans over and kisses me on the forehead as I slump into my pillow.

‘Sorry. Early start tomorrow.’

‘Not for me.’

‘Well, count yourself lucky,’ she replies, wriggling into a comfortable position, her back towards me.

‘Will you wake me up before you go?’ I ask.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m not going to see you for the rest of the week. I’d like to say goodbye properly.’

With a sigh, Anna rolls back over to face me. She looks sleepy and adorable. ‘But the cab’s coming at a quarter to six,’ she says. ‘It’s inhuman. There’s no need to ruin your day.’

I shrug. ‘I’d like to ruin my day, if it’s all the same to you.’

Anna softens. ‘You’re mad,’ she says. ‘Sweet, but mad.’ She smiles. Her hand strokes my cheek.

‘So you’ll wake me?’ I persist.

She rolls away from me again. ‘All right,’ comes the muffled reply. I sense her body relaxing for sleep.

A pause. ‘Goodnight, then.’

‘Night, sweetheart,’ yawns Anna.

She shifts again, and then remains still. Her gentle, sleep-heavy breath soon becomes rhythmic and smooth. I stare at the blackness around me.

I do not sleep well. When I finally wake, pummelled by a bruising sequence of unremembered dreams, I glance at my clock. It is eight o’clock. Anna is long gone.

In the kitchen is a note.

Sorry I didn’t wake you, Matthew. Couldn’t do it, in the end. You looked so peaceful, I couldn’t bear to disturb you.

Hope you don’t mind. I’ll call you this evening from the hotel. Have fun. Wish me luck!

A

PS It’s Noon’s birthday on Saturday. Can you please send her a card from both of us? Thanks. (She’ll be 93.)

Noon is Anna’s grandmother. Everybody in her family dotes on her, which I find bemusing, as she is the most vituperative, cantankerous old crone I have ever met. Still, sending the rebarbative old trout a birthday card won’t kill me, I suppose.