Excerpt
?1?
Doris Dubois is twenty-three years younger than I am. She is slimmerthan I am, and more clever. She has a degree in economics,and hosts a TV arts programme. She lives in a big house with aswimming pool at the end of a country lane. It used to be mine.She has servants and a metal security gate which glides open whenher little Mercedes draws near. I tried to kill her once, but failed.
When Doris Dubois comes into a room all heads turn: she has asunny disposition and perfect teeth. She smiles a lot and mostpeople find themselves returning the smile. If I did not hate herI expect I would quite like her. She is, after all, the nation's sweetheart.My husband loves her, and can see no fault in her. He buysher jewels.
The swimming pool is covered, warmed, and flanked by marbletiles and can be used summer and winter. Trees and shrubs incontainers have been placed all around the pool area. In photographs? and the press come often to see how Doris Duboislives ? the pool seems to exist in a mountain grotto. The waterhas to be cleaned of leaves more often than any pool of mine everdid. But who's counting cost?
Doris Dubois swims in her pool every morning, and twice aweek my ex-husband Barley dives in to swim beside her. I havehad them watched by detectives. After their swim servants comeand offer warmed white towels into which they snuggle with littlecries of joy. I have heard these cries on tape, as well as othermore important, more profound, less social cries, those noisesmen and woman make when they abandon rationality and throwin their lot with nature. ?Cris dejouissance?, the French call them.Défense d'émettre des cris dejouissance, I read once on a bedroomwall in a French hotel when Barley and I were in our heyday, andwent on our humble holidays so happily together. In the dayswhen we thought love would last forever, when we were poor,when joy was on the agenda.
Défense d'émettre des cris de jouissance. They had a hope!
Barley has aged better than I have. I smoked and drank and lay inthe sun during the years of our happiness, on this Riviera andthat, and my skin has dried out dreadfully and the doctor will notlet me take what he calls artificial hormones. I get them throughthe Internet but do not tell either my doctor or my psychoanalystthis. The former would warn me against them and the latterwould tell me to find my inner self before attending to the outer.Sometimes I worry about the dosage I take, but not often. I haveother things to worry about.
?2?
"It's too bad," said Doris to Barley as they lay beside oneanother in a tumbled pile of white cotton and lace bedclothes,in a vast bed whose elegant top and tail had beendesigned, even though not made, by the great Giacomettihimself, "that that murderess should still be using yourname."
"Murderess might be too strong," said Barley amiably,
"Murderous, was how the judge described her"
"The difference is only marginal," said Doris. "The fact that I amstill alive is due to me and not to her. My foot still hurts. I thinkyou should get your lawyers on to it. It's absurd that after divorcewomen should be allowed to keep their husband's name. Theyshould revert to the one they had before they married: theyshould cut their losses and start over. Otherwise the mistakes ofone's youth ? like marriage to the wrong person ? can hangaround to haunt you forever. I speak for her sake, as well as myown, and indeed yours. While she calls herself Salt she is boundto attract headlines."
"It seems a little hard to take away Gracie's name" said Barley. "Iwas the only claim to fame she ever had. She was a schoolgirlwhen I met her: a schoolgirl she remained, at heart. A man suchas myself needs a little sophistication in his partner."
"I hate it when you call her Gracie," said Doris. "I want you onlyever to refer to her as your ex-wife."
Grace Salt had started life as Dorothy Grace McNab, but Barleyhad preferred Grace to Dorothy, Dorothy reminding him of JudyGarland in The Wizard of Oz, so Grace she had become.
Doris had not started life as Doris Dubois but as Doris Zoac, rightdown there at the end of the alphabet where no-one looks exceptthe taxman, and had changed it by deed-poll the better to furtherher media ambitions. She had never got round to telling Barleythis, and the longer she put it off the harder it got to say.
"It seems a little hard to take my ex-wife's name away," saidBarley, obediently. He, who exercised power over so many, tookparticular pleasure in being bossed around by Doris. They bothgiggled a little, from the sheer naughtiness of it all, of being happy.
Doris Dubois wore her jewellery to bed, for Barley. He lovedthat. He loved not just the sight of it, white gold and pavé diamonds,cold metal intricately, beautifully worked, lain heavilyagainst the cool, moist flesh of wrist and throat, but he lovedthe feel of it. Last night as his hand had strayed over herbreasts, their nipples peaked in reassuring response, and up tofeel the tenderness of her mouth, his fingers had encounteredthe smooth, hard edge of metal, and his whole body had beenstartled into instant response. Sometimes Barley was mildlyworried by the people who said to him, vulgarly, "Oh well,what does age matter, there's always Viagra when the newnesswears off," but eighteen months on there was no sign of itdoing so. Doris kept Barley young: and the gifts he gave herwere by the very nature of their giving returned ? not by wayof bribe or payment, but as tokens of simple adoration. Barleywas fifty-eight years old, and Doris was thirty-two.
?3?
I must face the truth about Doris Dubois. She reflects fame andstatus on my husband, as he does on her, and he cannot resist it.What chance have I? She is the darling of the media: now they arean item Barley has his picture in Hello! and Harper's and Queen,and a fine handsome couple they make. She with her bosomhanging out of Versace and her throat so white and elegant,ringed with bright jewels: he with his thick grey hair, broadshoulders and strong industrial jaw. When Barley was with me henever rose above The Developers' and Builders' Bulletin, althoughonce he did make the cover. But he is ambitious: it was notenough for him: he can't stay still. It was Hello! or bust.
Barley is one of those well-built men with graven features whorise to positions of great power: his jaw has grown squarerthrough the years. Even his hair has stayed thick as it greys. He isa master of men, and it shows. If the world is ever to see thecloning of humans, these are the pair that should be chosen tomake it a better place. I said as much to my psychotherapist, DrJamie Doom, the other day and he congratulated me on myinsight.
Twelve months after our parting, six months after our divorce, Ihave stopped trying to convince myself and others that in losingBarley I have lost nothing of value. I no longer describe him toothers, after the vulgar manner of so many deserted spouses, asselfish, bullying, mean, unreasonable, hopelessly neurotic, eveninsane. He is none of these things. Barley, like Doris, is kind, goodand perceptive, clever and handsome, and capable of great love.It's just that he gives it to her, not me.
?4?
"The fact is that your ex-wife does not deserve your name," saidDoris after breakfast. Once she got an idea into her head it tendedto stay there. "She is violent and aggressive and full of hate andspite."
They ate on the terrace, in the early sun. Doris had to be at thestudio by ten, and Barley at a meeting of the Confederation ofBritish Industry likewise. Doris's Philippine maid Maria serveddecaff and fruit, calories carefully weighed and...
