The Edge of Reason Read online

  After that I literally couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “I’m going to have to go,” I whispered to Giles.

  “I know,” he said conspiratorially. “Shall I walk you back to the cottage?”

  Managed to put him off and ended up teetering across the gravel in my Pied à Terre slingbacks and sinking gratefully into even this ludicrously uncomfortable bed. Mark is probably at this moment getting into bed with Rebecca. Wish I was anywhere else but here: the Kettering Rotary summer fete, the Sit Up Britain morning meeting, the gym. But is own fault. I decided to come.

  SUNDAY 13 JULY

  318 lbs., alcohol units 0, cigarettes 12 (all secret), people rescued from water accidents 1, people who shouldn’t have been rescued from said water accidents but left in water to go all wrinkly 1.

  Bizarre, thought-provoking day.

  After breakfast, I decided to escape and wandered round the water garden, which was quite pretty, with shallow rivulets between grassy banks and under little stone bridges, surrounded by a hedge with all the fields beyond. I sat down on a stone bridge, looking at the stream, and thinking how it all didn’t matter because there would always be nature, and then I heard voices approaching behind the hedge.

  “. . . Worst driver in the world . . . Mother’s constantly . . . correct him but . . . no concept . . . of steering accuracy. He lost his no-claims bonus forty-five years ago and never got it back since.” It was Mark. “If I was my mother I’d refuse to go in the car with him, but they won’t be parted. It’s rather endearing.”

  “Oh, I love that!” Rebecca. “If I were married to someone I really loved I would want to be with them constantly.”

  “Would you?” he said eagerly. Then he went on. “I think, as you get older, then . . . the danger is if you’ve been single for a time, you get so locked into a network of friends—this is particularly true of women—that it hardly leaves room for a man in their lives, emotionally as much as anything because their friends and their views are their first point of reference.”

  “Oh, I quite agree. For me, of course I love my friends, but they’re not top of my list of priorities.”

  You’re telling me, I thought. There was silence, then Mark burst out again.

  “This self-help book nonsense—all these mythical rules of conduct you’re presumed to be following. And you just know every move you make is being dissected by a committee of girlfriends according to some breathtakingly arbitrary code made up of Buddhism Today, Venus and Buddha Have a Shag and the Koran. You end up feeling like some laboratory mouse with an ear on its back!”

  I clutched my book, heart pounding. Surely this couldn’t be how he saw what had happened with me?

  But Rebecca was off on one again. “Oh, I quite agree,” she gushed. “I have no time for all that stuff. If I decide I love someone then nothing will stand in my way. Nothing. Not friends, not theories. I just follow my instincts, follow my heart,” she said in new simpery voice, like a flower girl-child of nature.

  “I respect you for that,” said Mark quietly. “A woman must know what she believes in, otherwise how can you believe in her yourself?”

  “And trust her man above all else,” said Rebecca in yet another voice, resonant and breath-controlled, like an affected actress doing Shakespeare.

  Then there was an excruciating silence. I was dying, dying frozen to the spot, assuming they were kissing.

  “Of course I said all this to Jude,” Rebecca started up again. “She was so concerned about everything Bridget and Sharon had told her about not marrying Richard—he’s such a great guy—and I just said, ‘Jude, follow your heart.’ ”

  I gawped, looking to a passing bee for reassurance. Surely Mark couldn’t be slaveringly respectful of this?

  “Ye-es,” he said doubtfully. “Well I’m not sure . . .”

  “Giles seems to be very keen on Bridget!” Rebecca burst in, obviously sensing she had veered off course.

  There was a pause. Then Mark said, in an unusually high-pitched voice, “Oh really. And is . . . is this reciprocated?”

  “Oh, you know Bridget,” said Rebecca airily. “I mean Jude says she’s got all these guys after her”—good old Jude, I started to think—“but she’s so screwed up she won’t—well, as you say, she can’t get it together with any of them.”

  “Really?” Mark jumped in. “So have there been . . .”

  “Oh, I think—you know—but she’s so bogged down in her rules of dating or whatever it is that no one’s good enough.”

  Could not work out what was going on. Maybe Rebecca was trying to make him stop feeling guilty about me.

  “Really?” said Mark again. “So she isn’t . . .”

  “Oh, look, there’s a duckling! Oh, look, a whole brood of ducklings! And there’s the mother and father. Oh, what a perfect, perfect moment! Oh, let’s go look!”

  And off they went, and I was left, breathless, mind racing.

  After lunch, it was boiling hot and everyone decamped under a tree at the edge of the lake. It was an idyllic, pastoral scene: an ancient stone bridge over the water, willows overhanging the grassy banks. Rebecca was triumphant. “Oh, this is such fun!! Isn’t it, everyone? Isn’t it fun?”

  Fat Nigel from Mark’s office was fooling about heading a football to one of the hoorays, huge stomach quivering in the bright sunlight. He made a lunge, missed and plunged headfirst into the water, displacing a giant wave.

  “Yesss!” said Mark, laughing. “Breathtaking incompetence.”

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” I said vaguely to Shaz. “You expect to see lions lying down with lambs.”

  “Lions, Bridget?” said Mark. I started. He was sitting right at the other side of the group, looking at me through a gap in the other people, raising one eyebrow.

  “I mean like in psalm whatsit,” I explained.

  “Right,” he said. There was a familiar teasing look in his eye. “Do you think you might be thinking of the Lions of Longleat?”

  Rebecca suddenly leaped to her feet. “I’m going to jump off the bridge!”

  She looked round beaming expectantly. Everyone else was in shorts or little dresses, but she was naked except for a tiny sliver of Calvin Klein brown nylon.

  “Why?” said Mark.

  “Because attention was diverted from her for five minutes,” breathed Sharon.

  “We used to do it when we were little! It’s heaven!”

  “But the water’s very low,” said Mark.

  It was true, there was a foot and a half of baked earth all the way round the waterline.

  “No, no. I’m good at this, I’m very brave.”

  “I really don’t think you should, Rebecca,” said Jude.

  “I have made up my mind. I am resolute!” she twinkled archly, slipped on a pair of Prada mules, and sashayed off towards the bridge. Happily, there was a bit of mud and grass attached to her upper right-hand buttock, which greatly added to the effect. As we watched, she took off the mules, held them in her hand and climbed on to the edge of the parapet.

  Mark had got to his feet, looking worriedly at the water and up at the bridge.

  “Rebecca!” he said. “I really don’t think . . .”

  “It’s all right, I trust my own judgment,” she said playfully, tossing her hair. Then she looked upwards, raised her arms, paused dramatically and jumped.

  Everyone stared as she hit the water. The moment came when she should have reappeared. She didn’t. Mark started towards the lake just as she broke the surface screaming.

  He ploughed off towards her as did the other two boys. I reached in my bag for my mobile.

  They pulled her to the shallows and eventually, after much writhing and crying, Rebecca came limping to shore, supported between Mark and Nigel. It was clear that nothing too terrible could have happened.

  I got up and handed her my towel. “Shall I dial 999?” I said as a sort of joke.

  “Yes . . . yes.”

  Everyone gathered round
staring at the injured hostess’s foot. She could move her toes, daintily and professionally painted in Rouge Noir, so that was a blessing.

  In the end I got the number of her doctor, took the out-of-surgery hours number from the answerphone, dialed it and handed the phone to Rebecca.

  She spoke at length to the doctor, moving her foot according to his instructions and making a great range of noises, but in the end it was agreed there was no breakage, not really a sprain, just a slight jar.

  “Where’s Benwick?” said Nigel, as he dried himself and helped himself to a big slug of chilled white wine.

  “Yes, where is Giles?” said Louise Barton-Foster. “I haven’t seen him all morning.”

  “I’ll go and see,” I said, grateful to get away from the hellish sight of Mark rubbing Rebecca’s delicate ankle.

  It was nice to get into the cool of the entrance hall with its sweeping staircase. There was a line of statues on marble plinths, Oriental rugs on the flagstone floor, and another of the giant garish crests above the door. I stood for a moment, relishing the peace. “Giles?” I said and my voice echoed round and round. “Giles?”

  There was no reply. I had no idea where his room was, so set off up the magnificent staircase.

  “Giles!”

  I peeked into one of the rooms and saw a gigantic carved-oak four-poster bed. The whole room was red and it looked out over the scene with the lake. The red dress Rebecca had been wearing at dinner was hanging over the mirror. I looked at the bed and felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. The Newcastle United boxer shorts I bought Mark for Valentine’s Day were neatly folded on the bedspread.

  I shot out of the room and stood with my back to the door, breathing unsteadily. Then I heard a moan.

  “Giles?” I said. Nothing. “Giles? It’s Bridget.”

  The moaning noise came again.

  I walked along the corridor. “Where are you?”

  “Here.”

  I pushed open the door. This room was lurid green and hideous with huge lumps of dark wood furniture everywhere. Giles was lying on his back with his head turned to one side, moaning slightly, the telephone off the hook beside him.

  I sat on the bed and he opened his eyes slightly and closed them again. His glasses were skew-whiff on his face. I took them off.

  “Bridget.” He was holding a bottle of pills.

  I took them from him. Temazepam.

  “How many have you taken?” I said, taking his hand.

  “Six . . . or four?”

  “When?”

  “Not long . . . about . . . not long.”

  “Make yourself sick,” I said, thinking that they always pumped overdosed people’s stomachs.

  We went together into the bathroom. It wasn’t attractive, frankly, but then I gave him lots of water and he flopped back on the bed and started to sob quietly, holding my hand. He had called Veronica, his wife, it emerged groaningly, as I stroked his head. And he had lost all sense of himself and self-respect by begging her to come back, thereby undoing all his good dignified work of the last two months. At this, she’d announced she definitely wanted a divorce and he felt desperate, which I could totally relate to. As I told him, it was enough to drive anyone to the Temazepam.

  There were footsteps in the corridor, a knock, and then Mark appeared in the doorway.

  “Will you ring the doctor again?” I said.

  “What’s he taken?”

  “Temazepam. About half a dozen. He’s been sick.”

  He stepped out in the corridor. There were more voices. I heard Rebecca go “Oh, for God’s sake!” and Mark trying to quieten her down, then more low mumbling.

  “I just want everything to stop. I don’t want to feel like this. I want it all just to stop,” moaned Giles.

  “No, no,” I said. “You have to have hope and confidence that everything will turn out all right, and it will.”

  There were more footsteps and voices in the house. Then Mark reappeared.

  He gave a half smile. “Sorry about that.” Then he looked serious again. “You’re going to be all right, Giles. You’re in good hands here. The doctor’ll be round in fifteen minutes but he said nothing to worry about.”

  “Are you OK?” he said to me.

  I nodded.

  “You’re being great,” he said. “A rather more attractive version of George Clooney. Will you stay with him till the doctor comes?”

  When the doctor had finally sorted Giles out half the people seemed to have left. Rebecca was sitting tearfully in the baronial hall with her foot up, talking to Mark, and Shaz was standing at the front door, smoking a cigarette, with both our bags packed.

  “It’s just so inconsiderate,” Rebecca was saying. “It’s ruined the whole weekend! People should be strong and resolute, it’s so . . . self-indulgent and self-obsessed. Don’t just say nothing, don’t you think I’m right?”

  “I think we should . . . talk about it later,” said Mark.

  After Shaz and I had said our good-byes and were putting our bags in the car, Mark came out to us.

  “Well done,” he barked. “Sorry. God, I sound like a sergeant major. The surroundings are getting to me. You were great, back there, with . . . with . . . well, with both of them.”

  “Mark!” Rebecca yelled. “I’ve dropped my walking stick.”

  “Fetch!” said Sharon.

  For a split second a look of pure embarrassment flashed across Mark’s face, then he recovered himself and said, “Well, nice to see you, girls, drive safely.”

  As we drove away, Shaz was giggling gleefully at the idea of Mark spending the rest of his life forced to run around after Rebecca, following her orders and fetching sticks like a puppy, but my mind was turning round and round the conversation I’d overheard behind the hedge.

  * * *

  10

  Mars and Venus in the Dustbin

  MONDAY 14 JULY

  130 lbs., alcohol units 4, cigarettes 12 (no longer priority), calories 3,752 (pre-diet), self-help books scheduled for dustbin 47.

  8 a.m. In turmoil. Surely it cannot be that reading self-help books to improve my relationship has destroyed the whole relationship? Feel like entire life’s work has been a failure. But if is one thing have learned from self-help books is how to let go of the past and move on.

  About to be thrown out:

  What Men Want

  How Men Think and What They Feel

  Why Men Feel They Want What They Think They Want The Rules

  Ignoring the Rules

  Not Now Honey, I’m Watching the Game

  How to Seek and Find the Love You Want

  How to Find the Love You Want Without Seeking It How to Find You Want the Love You Didn’t Seek

  Happy to Be Single

  How Not to Be Single

  If the Buddha Dated

  If Mohammed Dated

  If Jesus Dated Aphrodite

  The Famished Road by Ben Okri (not strictly self-help book, as far as know, but will never read the bloody thing anyway)

  Right. All going in the bin plus the other thirty-two. Oh God, though. Cannot bear to throw out The Road Less Traveled and You Can Heal Your Life. Where else is one to turn for spiritual guidance to deal with problems of modern age if not self-help books? Also maybe should give to Oxfam? But no. Must not ruin relationships of others, especially in Third World. Would be worse than behavior of tobacco giants.

  Problems

  Hole in wall of flat.

  Finances in negative position owing to second mortgage for hole in wall of flat.

  Boyfriend going out with Other Woman.

  Not speaking to joint best friend as is going on holiday with boyfriend and Other Woman.

  Work crap but necessary owing to second mortgage for hole in wall o
f flat.

  Badly need holiday owing to boyfriend/friends/hole in wall of flat/professional and financial crises but no one to go on holiday with. Tom is going back to San Francisco. Magda and Jeremy are going to Tuscany with Mark and fucking Rebecca and probably Jude and Vile Richard too for all I know. Shazzer being evasive presumably waiting to see if Simon will agree to go somewhere with her if sleep in twin beds (not under five foot), hoping he will get into hers.

  Also no money to go on holiday owing to financial crisis owing to hole in wall of flat.

  No. Am not going to weaken. Have been too swayed this way and that by everyone else’s ideas. They are going. In. The. Bin. I am Going. To stand on. Own. Two. Feet.

  8:30 a.m. Flat is purged of all self-help books. Feel empty and spiritually at sea. But surely some of information will have stayed in head?

  Spiritual principles have garnered from self-help book study (nondating based):

  Importance of positive thought cf.: Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Confidence, The Road Less Traveled, How to Rid Your Thighs of Cellulite in 30 Days, Gospel according to St. Luke, Ch. 13.

  Importance of forgiveness.

  Importance of going with flow and instincts rather than trying to squeeze everything into shape and organize everything.

  Importance of confidence in self.

  Importance of honesty.

  Importance of enjoying present moment and not fantasizing or regretting things.

  Importance of not being obsessed with self-help books.

  So solution is to:

  Think what a nice time am having writing lists of problems and spiritual solutions instead of planning ahead and. . .

  Gaaah! Gaaah! Is 8:45! Am going to miss morning meeting and not have time for cappuccino.

  10 a.m. In work. Thank God have got cappuccino to help self through aftermath of hell of buying cappuccino when late. Is bizarre how cappuccino queue thing gives whole areas of London appearance of war- or communism-torn culture with people standing patiently in huge queues for hours as if waiting for bread in Sarajevo while others sweat, roasting and grinding, banging metal things full of gunge around, with steam hissing. Is odd when people generally show less and less willingness to wait for anything that should be prepared to do so for this one thing: as if in cruel modern world is only thing one can really trust and hold on to . . . Gaaah!