Claire’s eyes began exuding fire.
—You were with a girl earlier, weren’t you? She kissed you on the forehead. What have you been doing this morning, Mark? Have you been sleeping with yet another woman? Minutes before you were to marry me?
—This is ridiculous.
Right then, I felt a tap on my back. I turned round to discover that Claire’s father was behind me. Our guests had caught up. Two beefy arms encircled me, crushing my ribs.
—Welcome to the family, sonny boy.
His words boomed into my ears; I could smell the hot, pungent odor of whiskey on his breath. I also realized that there was a tattoo of a naked woman on the back of his neck. When he released me, I saw that Claire had been besieged by her sisters and mother, all gushing over her unprecedented success at snagging a Duo. The storm in Claire’s eyes had, thankfully, abated; she looked pretty chuffed by the attention she was getting.
—Praise the Lord! I’ve married you off!
Even the pigeons in the rafters must have heard the squeal that emanated from the venerable Mrs. Bushey. I winced as she flapped her arms under that giant gaudy hat of hers, before pecking Claire on the cheek and reaching for a service booklet to fan the sodden circles around her armpits.
Thank God, I thought. Disaster has been averted.
The subsequent festivities passed without too much incident. William, predictably, gave a best-man’s speech designed to embarrass. Claire’s father had to be scraped off the floor in a stupor at the end of the evening. My bottles of Chateau Margaux 1982 (which I’d procured at the bargain-basement price of ￡59 per bottle from the Trinity cellars, thanks to my excellent relationship with the college bursar) were wasted on him. I’m not sure the man even knew what he was drinking. I should have put out half a barrel of the cheapest plonk from the co-op. And I lost count of the times I saw Claire’s sisters making eyes at William and Paul.
Claire and I eventually parted ways outside the front gates of Trinity at six minutes before midnight. The black cab I had summoned to take her back to Mill Road was already waiting outside on the cobblestoned street.
—I’ll see you on Thursday. I’m sure you’ll love the house I’ve found for us: 23 Milton Road. Which makes it convenient for you to get to Varsity Blues each evening. The house is a little on the small side. But it looks comfy. I’m sorry we can’t move in tonight, but the lease only begins on Thursday. I promise to send the moving men over to Mill Road to get your belongings as soon as they finish moving my things from Trinity.
Claire opened her mouth. But nothing came out of it. Instead, I saw her lower lip beginning to quiver.
—We’ll be happy in Milton, Claire. We’ll try to be, at least. And I promise to find work as a writer, instead of swanning around Trinity pretending to be a clever academic.
Tears began welling up in her eyes.
—I’m tempted not to write down that business in my diary tonight, Mark. The lipstick on your forehead. I’d much rather forget what I saw. Because it was otherwise a perfect day.
Exhaustion hit me at that point. It had been a long day. A crazy girl I once dated attempted to stab me in the morning. And I married a Mono in the afternoon, to my family’s disgust. All I wanted to do was to go back to my room and collapse on the bed.
—I didn’t cheat on you, Claire.
I kissed her on the cheek and began trudging in the direction of my room. I’m secretly glad the officious head porter had trotted out the rule book and insisted that my college room is for single occupancy only, even if I’m married. Because I still have five more blissful nights of having my own space to think.
What a way to begin life as a married man, though. This must be the longest diary entry I’ve ever written. It’s twenty-two pages long. But it must also be the most eventful day of my life thus far.
I’ll have plenty to mull over tomorrow. I wonder what marriage to a Mono will bring (judging from the behavior of Claire’s family today, I’ll have quite a bit on my plate). But I have done the right thing by marrying the woman bearing my child. It’s the only honorable thing to do. A real man has to face up to his responsibilities. And I should go to sleep knowing this fact, even if the rest of my family is still blinded by their class prejudices. Someday they will see how wrong they were.
I look up from my diary. It all makes sense now. Claire hasn’t changed, even after twenty long years of marriage. She was jealous because she saw me holding Anna’s hand on our way to the ball. She was quick to reach the conclusion that I’d been sleeping with Anna (and her assumption was right). But she also became jealous of an imaginary sexual partner on our wedding day simply because she saw a lipstick smear on my forehead.
I now know the reason why Claire emptied my 1995 folder. She’s trying to obtain evidence that I was unfaithful on our wedding day. She’s hoping to claim that she’s been putting up with my infidelities from day one. So she can smash my political aspirations to smithereens, given that I’ve staked my campaign on our solid, unbreakable Duo-Mono union. Perhaps even cast herself as a long-suffering Mono housewife, one with a heart large enough to put up with a philandering Duo husband for years.
But does Claire understand what’s happening to us right now? And should I tell her what really occurred the day before yesterday?
BBC World News
IMF Summit Ends Early
Saturday, 11 October 2014
The International Memory Fund (IMF) has ended the sessions of its scientific summit on memory improvement a full day earlier than scheduled, following protests by activists in Prague.
The campaigners managed to block movement to the convention hotel by staging a peaceful sit-in on the road. They had earlier issued a statement: “The IMF should be deterred from funding research on memory improvement because more memory only creates more hatred and misery.”
The Czech minister of memory research, Pavel Novak, delivered his concluding remarks to an almost empty hall, saying: “It’s a pity this conference will be remembered for its unhappy ending.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sophia
1 February 2015
Talk about fucking progress. So Mark Henry Evans had the misfortune to run into me in York. We then struck up a mutually beneficial arrangement. He gets plenty of sex. I get loads of dirt.
It’s funny how love can mutate so easily into hate. It’s like flipping a coin. The penny either lands on one side or the other. Heads or tails. Love or hate. Nothing in between.
Small things add up. Tiny slights add up.
All memories fucking add up.