[Note to readers: Don't start here! It is better to start with Chapter 1 so that you will have some idea of what is going on. For those of you that have read this far please remember there are two narrators: Nick writing the main body of the text, and Lily adding her comments (without Nick's knowledge) in italics.]
Chapter 4
In which Nick decides to finish with Sandra – is reminded of a shameful episode and learns to see it in a new light
I was going to have to do something I hated; to be the one to break off the relationship. What was I going to say when Sandra wanted to know why? In a moment of detached insight I realised that an outsider might see something rather cold in a man who could be thinking like this only minutes after his lover had gone.
Maybe she would notice that where once I might have invited her to stay overnight, or at least walked her home, which was not that far away, I now called a taxi, by that pretty much deciding that she was going whether she liked it or not. But then again it was not really me that she was going to bed with but rather what I think of as 'the mask', and I am no longer sure that the mask is the blessing I used to think. And this time I had been thinking of that disturbing girl in the room below, even while Sandra had writhed beneath me, and I had even for a moment worried that I might inadvertently have said Lily's name, but if I did she had not noticed.
Wow. I must be getting to him already. This is great – kind of a literary version of 'mirror, mirror, on the wall ...'
The next morning, returning from a book-buying expedition I had occasion to think of the mask again.
There should be a special word for when a revelation forces you to reinterpret a remembered episode. It would have to be one of those long German words like Schadenfreude; drawing on my schoolboy German maybe something like Speichererdbeben – a 'memory earthquake'. My Speichererdbeben concerned a rather exciting, if also shameful episode. The one time to my knowledge I had cuckolded someone.
Nick? Cuckold someone? I never knew you had it in you. I want to know more.
The whole scenario was bizarre from the start. An invitation out of the blue, from Andrew Barnett. I had known him from the university chess team, and given that I had first replaced him as captain and then dropped him from the regular team, it was hardly a good basis for a life-long friendship.
The problem with Andrew was not his chess; unlike me he was willing to put in the hours learning opening theory; but rather his mental strength, his will to win, or rather lack of it. In practice sessions he was the one everyone consulted with difficult endgames, on how to solve the hardest problems; but in a competitive game it all changed. He made stupid beginner's mistakes, taking way too long to think about standard situations, leaving himself in terrible time trouble.
As much as anything else it was curiosity that made me accept the invite. Andrew wanted us to play chess and, basking in the glow of the recent success of my first novel, I was quite willing to let Andrew have the cathartic experience of beating me, of being able to say 'he may be a famous author but I wiped the floor with him'.
When I turned up at the house I got more than one surprise. I had assumed that Andrew would be in a bachelor flat, either excessively tidy or a squalid pit. But no, it was a decent-sized detached house in a good neighbourhood. And there was a pretty, rather diffident wife!
Inside I laughed at myself for all my misconceptions, how I had got it all so wrong. So much for the perceptive novelist!
The wife, Faith (a name I would never have dared to invent in the light of what was too happen), struck me as being ideal for Andrew. She was rather shy, only briefly meeting my eyes before glancing away and actually blushing in a rather fetching manner. 'Demure' was the word that came to mind, with a rather old-fashioned dress and those tight little Victorian style high-heeled ankle boots, which for some reason I have always found a turn-on. Their home was rather more stylish than I would have imagined and the art on the walls a little more edgy than I would ever have expected.
And Andrew was different. More comfortable in his skin, and his eyes had aged far more than the years would allow: there seemed to be a look of cynical wisdom in them.
Since Faith was inclined to stick around I tried to engage her in small talk, although it was rather hard going. She worked in a second-hand bookshop, which was a perfect fit with the impression she made on me. I could imagine her hiding among dusty bookcases, an unknowing object of lust for lonely furtive old men of all ages, until one day Andrew had mustered the courage to ask her out. And she sang madrigals in a choir. Candlelit frigid churches and men with overly neat beards and badly-knitted jumpers.
Despite the apparent change in him, in other ways the evening had corresponded more to the Andrew I remembered. Insecurity and bluster. He wanted to play chess, and this time he was going to beat me. He suggested putting money on the game, a thousand pounds, and Faith had responded, with a very young sounding voice, slightly pleading,
"But Andy, you know we can't spare that kind of money. I'm sure that Nick being a successful author and everything, it would just be small change to him, but that's almost a month's salary for you".
Even at the time I felt like taking her on one side and telling her that was the worst possible approach she could take. Pointing to my success was going to 'push all his buttons', and I wondered how she could be married to him and come out with something like that. Well actually I was mostly wondering how she could be married to Andrew at all.
From there the discussion had careered out of control and somehow arrived at the stakes being my thousand pounds on one side and the chance to bed Faith on the other. I was never sure how that suggestion had even arisen – I certainly hadn't suggested it, I'm just not that kind of man. It seemed so sordid and tacky, although of course, if I am honest, also incredibly arousing.
I smell a rat here, Nick. But I bet you didn't.
There are so many chaotic vignettes in my memory of that evening. Her face burning red and telling Andrew that he had better win because she wasn't going to rescue him. Andrew assuring her that there was no way he would lose. I was telling myself that, at least for Faith's sake I was going to have to let the fool win, and feeling rather irritated that I was going to have pay a thousand pounds as the price of being the good guy at a time when my success was more about reviews than cash and it could not easily be spared.
I remember her scent. It was a mix of perfume and strangely, the smell of mothballs. Since then that camphor smell has been an erotic trigger for me, though I've never admitted that to anyone. And I remember the heat of her body, not warmth but heat. Even though she was only standing close and not touching me, I could feel it. I remember her telling Andrew to concentrate and stop boasting because if I won she would ... and then she left it unspecified.
At some point Andrew's hand trembled as he moved a piece. The wrong piece. Irritated beyond belief by the guy's behaviour I decided to punish him and do my best to win. Of course I would not be bedding Faith. After all that would be tantamount to rape.
I think not actually Nick – not rape at all, and if anyone was being taken advantage of then perhaps it was you.
And there it was. Not some drawn out ending to be won by attrition. A clear forthright checkmate, a bolt from the blue. Shock on Andrew's face, and a gasp from Faith. Then Andrew coming out with all sorts of stupid stuff and promising to get the money.
It was enough to make me want to punish him a little further,
"Come with me Faith. Show me to the bedroom". It took a moment for me to realise that this was me speaking.
And she did, without a word, slipping her small slim hand into mine and leading the way up the stairs. There was silence behind us and neither of us looked back.
The bedroom was a surprise. Warm dark colours. A strong rustic wooden four-poster bed. There were candles spread around the room and stern African-looking masks in dark, almost black, wood hung on the walls. There was a tall full–length ornately framed mirror on a stand in one corner.
