Blast from the Past

35

While Jack and Polly were wrestling with their pasts in London, back in the States another drama of betrayal was being played out. A man and a woman were sitting alone together in the faded splendour of a dining room that had been beautifully decorated twenty years before. It was dinner time in the eastern states and the couple had been sitting at their evening meal for an hour or so, but neither of them was hungry. Their food had gone cold before them. Hers remained entirely untouched; he had had a stab at his, but really all he had done was play nervously with the cold, congealed gravy.

“I’m sorry, Nibs,” he said. “What more can I say? I don’t want to do it but sometimes it just happens. I just can’t help myself.”

“Nibs” was the man’s private name for his wife. It was what he always called her when they were alone, their little secret, a token of his affection. These days they were alone together less and less. Their professional lives had grown so complex that dining together had become a matter for diaries, and when his work took him away she could no longer go with him. Perhaps it was that, she thought. Perhaps her career had driven him into the arms of other, stupider, more available women. She wondered if he had special names for them. Perhaps he had called them Nibs also, for convenience and to avoid embarrassing mistakes. At the thought of this Nibs’ eyes grew misty and briefly she took refuge in her napkin.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again, “but it meant nothing, it was meaningless.”

“What does she do?” Nibs enquired, attempting to make her voice sound calm.

“She works at the office. She’s with the travel department. She books cars and flights and stuff,” he replied.

“Fascinating,” she said bitterly. “You must have so much to talk about.”

“The point is, Nibs…”

“Don’t call me Nibs,” she snapped. “I don’t feel like being your Nibs right now.”

“The point is…”

His voice faltered. The point was that he was in trouble. That was the only reason he’d arranged the dinner, the only reason they were having the conversation. If he hadn’t been in trouble he would never have told her about the girl, just as he hadn’t told her about any of the other girls. Unfortunately, this current girl had not taken kindly to the brevity of their affair and had decided to hit back.

“She says she’s going to accuse me of harassing her.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Did you?”

“Not unless taking a girl to bed a couple of times is harassment.”

Nibs bit her lip. Why had he done it? Why did he keep doing it? He thought she didn’t know about the others but she’d heard the rumours. She knew about the jokes they told at his office. She’d caught the expressions of those dumb booby women when she accompanied him to business functions. She knew what they were thinking. “You may be a fancy lawyer, lady, but when your husband needs satisfying he comes to me.”

“I have plenty of enemies,” he said. “If this thing gets any kind of heat under it at all it could be very bad for me at work. I could lose my job.”

“You fool!” Nibs snapped. “You damn stupid fool.”