VALENTINE’S DAY

‘I love you,’ Julia said. 

‘Oh,’ said Eric. 

Then time itself paused while he thought about what else he might say. The first options that offered themselves were, obviously, ‘Thank you’, ‘I love you’ and ‘I don’t love you.’ All of which had some merit of being polite or true or partly true. Life was too complicated sometimes, he thought. He preferred the days when such dilemmas didn’t present themselves, popping up like an airbag in an accident. When he could go about his usual business of work and eat and gym and shower and Netflix and sleep. Maybe sex if he was lucky. Although these days, what with Julia’s sciatica and his bladder trouble it was a bit of an effort. Anyway, they liked to do word games before they turned out the light. She was better than him but often pretended not to know the answer so that he could get it, eventually. They both knew what she was up to and didn’t mention it. Well, it evened out; he was kind to her in subtle ways too. Like helping her with laptop issues and online stuff. He needed endless patience for that. She’d get rattled and scratchy, frustrated at her inability to grasp new technology. She got there in the end but he needed bucketloads of patience to stay with her and not mutter ‘Oh, do it yourself, then!’ and walk away. Tempted as he was, every time she said, ‘Eric… could you just… if you’ve got a minute…’ 

On those days - most days - the biggest decisions were about whether to trim his toenails with a curve or straight across. Was it really necessary to book an appointment at the hygienist so soon after the last one? Or were his small standing orders to the charities he cared about too small? 

‘Thank you’ was the polite response but he knew, even Eric knew, it was inadequate. Like being given a gift and asking immediately if the giver had the receipt. No, something more was required. 

‘And I love you’ was a possibility. Of course it was. It was the correct retort. The one without which there was a big hole, an absence. A right shoe without a left, salt but no pepper, Fortnum sans  Mason, a broken see-saw with both ends on the ground. He couldn’t deny Julia the ‘I love you’ words. She deserved to hear them, for heaven’s sake, whether they were true or not. 

True? What did that word even mean? ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’; that’s what they said in court. Wasn’t there a ‘so help me God’ as well? Or was that just in American films? And what if you don’t believe in God, how did you swear then? Some kind of secular, Humanist promise, all about integrity and honour? ‘Hope to die in a cellar full of rats’ came floating into his head from childhood. Probably not suitable when defending yourself against a speeding fine, the closest he’d come to a legal showdown. He’d won, anyway. 

‘True-up-to-a-point’ was not a phrase he thought Julia would settle for. She wasn’t an angry woman, not any more. True, she’d been a fiery thing in her youth, that’s what had attracted him to her, that day they met at the tennis club. ‘Who’s the redhead with the top spin backhand?’ he asked. Those were the things that made her stand out: the hair and the style. They were very much a slice and lob and ‘jolly well done’ kind of club. Her aggressive play with plenty of volleys, smashes and triumphant cries of ‘Yeh, played partner!’ marked her out as One to Watch. He’d done more than watch. He’d wooed and won. ‘Game, set and match made in heaven,’ as he’d said in his speech at the wedding all those years ago. That was another damn conundrum. ‘Do I take this woman, with all those caveats? Well, do I? Richer, sure. Poorer… um… And ’til death us do part? Standing at the altar in St Mary’s Church with all those eager eyes on him, Eric wanted so much to reply, ‘I guess so, on balance,’ but decided against. 

All those years ago. How many was it? Twenty-something. Was it the thirtieth next year? Gosh, he’d better have bloody made his mind up about whether he loved her by then. 

‘Of course I friggin’ love you!’ How was that? Too enthusiastic and out of character? ‘If you feel so strongly,’ she might say, ‘Where has that gung-ho exuberance been for the last decade? Why aren’t you showering me with jewels or sucking on my nipples?’ Or whatever passion looks like. ‘Doth the gentleman protest too much?’ she might wonder. ‘What’s he hiding?’ Me, thought Eric, keeping affairs and mistresses secret? Chance would be a fine thing. He suspected one or two of the ladies at the club found him easy on the eye and rather dashing since he’d begun sporting a moustache, but nothing more saucy than a compliment on his new shorts or an over-eager hug after a match ever took place. 

Angela Thorniwell had patted his hand at the reception following his sister Yvonne’s funeral, and said in her huskiest tones, ‘If there’s anything I can do, Eric. And I mean anything…’  in a way that implied all kinds of unconventional grief-counselling. But he’d politely side-stepped her offer and passed round the vol au vents. 

Chloe Lefèvre had once invited him to take a look at a mole that had appeared on her chest and he had dutifully done so, peering down into that golden-honey crevasse while explaining that her GP was the best bet as his PhD didn’t qualify him to diagnose, which he was pretty sure he’d told her before on at least two occasions. Still, she had impressive breasts and he was grateful to have a proper butchers in close up instead of the sneaked glances when she was getting ready to play. If he timed it right he could get a few seconds while she was pulling her sweatshirt over her head and her eyes were covered. Perfect. 

Nothing had ever happened with Choe or Angela or anyone else at the club. Or elsewhere. Unless you counted Alex. And that was really only a drunken snog and a fumble at the departmental Christmas do. Such a cliché, he realised but that’s how it was. It meant nothing. Alex was only there for a few months and had been a bit of a dark horse, cards close to the chest sort of thing. Julia couldn’t be persuaded to go with him to the office party, saying it wasn’t her thing at all. ‘All those crusty academics discussing Chaucer and Chomsky’ as she put it. She preferred to stay at home and watch some documentary about all the ways we’re messing up the planet. ‘Not very festive,’ he’d said and stormed out, banging the door. If she’d been there he wouldn’t have snogged Alex. Not that he was blaming Julia; that wouldn’t be fair.

There was punch. There was mistletoe. And they snogged. 

OK it was a bit more than a snog. It was several snogs, to the point that comments were made (he remembered ‘get a room’) and they went up to the fifth floor because Eric knew the security code. And the fumble was more than a fumble. It started with a fumble but, well, when a chap gets aroused and when there’s free punch and when hands wander below the belt… Gosh, remembering that evening now, Eric was both appalled and titillated. He remembered his perfunctory attempts to draw a line, saying ‘we shouldn’t do this’ and then ‘I’m a married man’. But Alex said, ‘So what?’ and Eric had let all kinds of answers remain in his head, unspoken. And neither of them said much after that because Eric was silenced by the fire of sensations assaulting him and Alex was on his knees performing a first-rate blow job. 

Eric had to assume it was first-rate. He’d received too few to be a fair judge. But it certainly did the trick. Actually two tricks: of delivering a shuddering orgasm off the scale of any he’d enjoyed before and embedding a sense of guilt so deep that Eric knew he would never, ever emerge from it into the light. He had blighted his life, his marriage, his wife’s trust. The chasm of his secret disgrace was deeper than the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. 

Nothing like it had ever happened again. And never would. He’d toyed with the idea of telling Julia. Not the full Monty but the ‘drunken kiss’ version. He could pretend Alex was a girl. But what would be the point of that, confessing but not confessing? And he’d only be doing it to assuage his own shame. No, that was insult to injury. So he locked it away and waited for it to rot and disappear. He was still waiting. 

When questions like ‘do I love her?’ came up the memory was as sharp and dangerous as ever. This would have to die with him. 

‘I love you.’ Simple words but masking such complexity. He heard kids and mums saying it on the phone in place of goodbye. Even dads. ‘Love you!’ they said, so unselfconscious. But did they mean it? Could it be as easy as that? 

I can say ‘I love raspberry ice cream’, he thought. Or ‘I love the new novel by such-and-such an author.’ But… you? 

‘Probably’ was also not good to include in his reply. 

Or ‘in my own way’. Or ‘it depends what you mean by love’. 

So many wrong answers. 

‘I don’t love you. How can I if I was unfaithful that time with Alex on the fifth floor? That’s not what love is.’ That would be honest, he supposed. Was it more important to be truthful or to give what was required? ‘Does this dress suit me?’ always, always demanded: ‘Yes, darling, you look wonderful.’ Without succumbing to the temptation of adding any kind of sub-clause such as ‘does the hem lower at all?’ or ‘will you be wearing a jacket over it?’ Yes. Just say yes. Just. Say. Yes. 

Eric looked at Julia, his wife of twenty-eight or maybe twenty-nine years. She wasn’t quite as fiery as she had once been. Although she was suspiciously still the same red-head. And he realised what a lucky old bastard he was. She could’ve had anyone at the tennis club and – 

Oh gosh, perhaps she had. Before they got together and even afterwards. Had she had a drunken fumble with Graham Thorniwell or Pierre Lefèvre or anyone else? Or had she performed a first- or even second-class act of oral sex, as she would call it, on Graham or Pierre. Or even Chloe. 

No, it seemed most unlikely. But then so was his own encounter that Christmas in 1998. 

But, as he allowed that vague possibility to float across the screen of his imagination, Eric realised something as clear as crystal. It didn’t matter if she had. She didn’t need to tell him, to confess. She had no need of his complicity or forgiveness. He accepted that she might have done and that she might not have done. Good lord, that felt very important. Why had it taken him so long to reach this realisation? 

Eric looked at Julia. It must be all of five seconds she’d been waiting for his reply.  

‘I love you,’ said Eric. ‘Of course I do.’

Julia smiled. It was such a sweet, wise expression. ‘I know you do,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to say it.’

‘Yes, I do,’ Eric said. 

‘Thank you.’

They held a gaze and said nothing for a few seconds Eric was the first to look away. He pushed himself up from the sofa (a new one, very comfortable, which they’d bought in the sale at Living World, 25% off). He needed a pee.  

‘You know,’ said Julia, ‘I’ve been thinking…’ 

‘Hm?’

‘Those new pills that Dr Dasgupta has prescribed for my sciatica have done wonders. I  haven’t felt a twinge all week.’

‘That’s good, dear. I’m just going to – ’

‘What say you we have another glass of wine?’

‘Another? On a Tuesday?’

‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘And then have an early night.’

He turned at the door to look at his wife. She was that fiery red-head again with the top-spin backhand. 

All Eric could manage in reply was, ‘Oh, well, um…’ 

‘But finish your crossword first, love,’ said Julia. ‘I know that’s important.’