Cassette #20
Hello Sean.
Today, as you can see, we’re in Paris. I think it’s ’90 but it might be ’91. For once, I failed to be my usual organised self, so there’s no clue pencilled on the back.
Anyway, it was one of the absolute high points for me. It’s such a cliché to say that Paris is romantic, but boy is it ever. Neither of us was having affairs and neither of us was unhappy at work, and April became, for three days only, this perfectly behaved little child. On top of all that, we got sunshine, too!
We walked along a canal somewhere at some point and I remember I looked across at you and my heart fluttered and I thought Oh good, it’s still there. I had doubted, for a moment. Forgive me.
I don’t remember that many specifics of the weekend except that the whole place seemed to glow in the April sunshine and everything seemed beautiful and chic and delicious.
You started smoking again briefly (you had stopped for some time) but the smell of Gauloises was everywhere and you just couldn’t help yourself, or so you said. I think you thought it would make you into a Parisian or something. April kept asking what Daddy was doing, and I kept saying “a bad thing”. But she liked it. “It looks pretty,” she said, “like Thomas the Tank Engine.”
We had a gorgeous meal with a horrible waiter. I remember that. And I bet you do too.
You made the unforgivable mistake of pouring wine into your water glass and he came bustling out of the back to tell you off. “You ruin it!” he kept saying. “You English! You know nothing!” So of course we both cracked up laughing which made things even worse. But it’s one of the fondest memories I have of the trip. Isn’t that peculiar?
He was lovely to April, though. I remember that because it seemed like the exact opposite of home. Here in England, there’s nothing more likely to get a waiter’s back up than taking your seven-year-old to a posh restaurant. But Monsieur Wrong Glass, as we used to call him, brought her a booster seat and special kiddy sized portions and then a handful of complimentary chocolates at the end. I think he felt sorry for poor April being brought up by such terrible heathens that we didn’t even know our water glasses from our wine glasses. All that fuss! It was the cheapest wine on the menu, too!
• • •
Sean plays the tape over and over and over again, but all he can hear is that one phrase: Neither of us was having affairs.
Does that mean what he thinks it means, or could it just have been a slip of the tongue? Is it even possible to wait until next Sunday to find out? Does he want to carry on listening at all, anymore?
Once he has convinced himself that there are no further clues, not in Catherine’s tone of voice, nor in her choice of words, he pushes the dictaphone to one side and stares at the photo.
He looks at little April in her blue plastic mac. (The red one which April wanted had reminded Catherine too much of Don’t Look Now.) She’s smiling and waving in the photo. They all are.
He tries to remember who took the photo. A random passer-by, presumably.
And then eventually, without any conscious decision having been taken, he slides his phone across the tabletop and calls Maggie.
It’s Dave who answers. He tells Sean that Maggie is occupied for a few minutes, which Sean takes to mean that she’s on the loo.
He’s just reaching for the dictaphone again when his phone starts to vibrate.
“Mags?”
“Yes. Sorry about that. What’s up?” she asks, sounding flustered.
“Sorry…” Sean says, “but…”
“Yes?”
“Mags, do you think Catherine had an affair?”
“What?”
“Do you think–”
“Sorry, I did hear you. It’s just… Why are we asking this?”
“I don’t know. I…”
“Did she say she did? Is this another one of her tape revelations?”
Sean frowns at his phone. Maggie is sounding brusque and unsympathetic, which is not like her at all. “Not really,” he says, starting to wish already that he hadn’t phoned. “But she said that at one point, in Paris, neither of us was having affairs.”
“Oh,” Maggie says. “She says she wasn’t having one, then? And her saying that makes you think she was having one for some reason? Have I got that right?”
“She said she wasn’t having one, then,” Sean says, pedantically. “Which surely implies that at another point she was, doesn’t it?”
Maggie sighs deeply. “I don’t see how that implies anything, Sean,” she says.
Sean shakes his head in frustration. He realises that without the context, without Maggie actually listening to the tape, he’s not making any sense. “You know what? Forget it,” he tells her. “I’m sorry. I’m being daft. Have a good Sunday.” And then he ends the call.
Maggie phones him back immediately but he doesn’t answer and she doesn’t leave a message.
He puts the recorder back in the box and puts the box back in the kitchen cabinet where he hopes he’ll be able to forget about it, even as he knows, with certainty, that he won’t.
A text message appears on the screen of his phone with a ping.
“She didn’t have an affair, Sean,” it reads. “I’m certain of it. And if she says or implies that she did, it’ll be like the rest. Another morphine induced anomaly. Relax. And give yourself a break from those damned tapes. As I keep saying, it’s really not healthy.”
• • •
Sean sleeps badly for three nights in a row.
Twice, in the wee small hours of the morning, he gets up, descends to the ground floor, and removes the tape recorder from the box. One time, at three a.m. on Wednesday, he goes as far as inserting the next tape and pressing play. But Catherine’s voice gets no further than explaining that it’s likely to be a shorter message than usual because she isn’t feeling well before Sean, overcome by guilt, hits the stop button.
On Thursday, at work, Jenny asks him if he’s feeling OK. “You’re looking a bit peaky,” she says.
When Sean tells her that he’s not been sleeping well, she suggests exercise. “It always fixes it for me,” she explains. “Go for a really long walk after dinner. You’ll see.” And as it’s a beautiful evening, that’s exactly what Sean does.
He heads, quite automatically, down to the river, where he hesitates momentarily about which way to walk. Right will take him to Riverside, which feels a bit too much like work. Left will take him towards The Backs, and then on towards Grantchester. He thinks of “his building” and decides, for want of a better destination, to make his way there. It should be lovely in the evening light.
By the time he has zigzagged back and forth to the river bank (there is no continuous footpath along the Cam) it takes him almost an hour of quite sporty walking, to reach the building.
He scrambles though the scrubby undergrowth beyond the furthest side wall, then down the bank to the river’s edge from where he can look proudly back up at the building he created. The evening sun is low in the sky and illuminates all sixteen windows quite magnificently. For once, the reality looks better than the artist’s impression he once drew.
Sean remembers quite clearly the late nights he put in designing windows that would fold back entirely, effectively transforming the lounges into balconies. He studies and congratulates himself upon the perfect way the building is staggered to make the most of the evening light. He remembers, again, the funky kitchen units he designed, complete with integrated, rotating, vanishing dinner tables. He wishes he could step inside and sense the smooth sliding movement once again. They had been so beautifully crafted by a local carpenter. He wonders how well they have aged.
A man, fifties, shirtsleeves, appears at one of the third floor windows. He pulls the handle of the vast sliding window, effectively sealing the interior against the cooling night air, and Sean remembers thinking, when he designed the building, that one day he would live there, that one day he would be that guy. He remembers, too, how on seeing the prices, he had understood that he would never be able to afford it.
The man returns to the window with a tumbler of golden liquid in his hand, perhaps whisky, perhaps just apple juice. He stares down at Sean suspiciously and then turns and says something to someone behind him. A woman, young, pretty, well dressed, comes into view. She follows the man’s gaze and takes in Sean’s presence before simply shrugging and vanishing again.
Sean turns his back to the building and takes in the splendid view one last time. The sun is just starting to dip behind the trees on the opposite bank and a couple are cycling along the footpath, their young daughter strapped into a child seat on the back. She looks like April.
He clambers back up to the road where he takes a photo of the For Sale sign before turning and heading for home.