Conversations 20

Andrea had learned to trust what I told her over the last five years, even when it was uncomfortable. She didn't ask me if a new dress made her bum look big any more, and in return, I didn't betray that trust. The irony was thick in the air that night.

"How can you live like that? How can you mistrust everyone? I've loved you for five years and been your wife for the last three. I thought it was just me you didn't trust. How could I not know about this... whatever aberration this is? I still don't understand how or why you became this way."

It was to be a night of revelations then. I sighed again. I started to speak and then stopped and stood up abruptly. She instantly reached for my hand, looking fearful.

"Please don't leave me."

"I'll be back in one minute," I reassured her, knowing that she meant those words on several levels. "Duty calls."

I headed to the gents, dished out a few presents, and returned a minute later, feeling better.

"Let's walk, and I'll tell you what you want to know."

She took my hand and joined me. As we collected our coats and left the hotel, I noted that she didn't look back even once. Santa was obviously on her naughty list -- if he was still in any of her plans at all. He certainly wasn't in any of mine. The presents I'd dished out were Secret Santa ones -- from staff members to co-workers with a £10 maximum limit -- all bundled up in that big red sack he carried. The bag was reasonably heavy, and I'd dished the presents out all in one go, swinging the thing at the back of his head while he was pissing at the urinal trough. A final caution about the dangers of messing with the wives of other men, while he lay flat on the floor and dazedly tried to squeeze piss out of the false beard, and I was gone in less than the minute I'd requested from Andrea.

It was a freezing cold December evening, there was a sharp frost in the air, and we were the only people in sight. The streets looked wet and shiny, and the illumination from the street lamps and shop window displays had a taut sharpness to it. Andrea pulled her scarf up over her mouth, and we both tucked our hands into our coat pockets as we strolled down towards the river. After a while, she tentatively slipped her right hand into my left pocket and clutched onto mine, intertwining our fingers. Despite an immediate reluctance, I suppressed my feelings and left it there.

"What do you want to know," I asked eventually, the tension growing thicker the further we walked.

"Everything," she said, her voice slightly muffled by the scarf. "When did this mistrust of the whole world start? I mean how, where, why... Everything?"

I gave a soft snort. "I guess it started from day one -- of my life, not my marriage to you. I told you I was an orphan and that I don't have family, but you never got any real details. One of the endless foster parents I ended up with really enjoyed tormenting me; enough that she relished telling me the minutiae of those events.

"My mother was seventeen when I was born. One night, when I was around three months old, she carried me to the park, left me on a bench and just walked away. So, legally, I'm not an orphan, although I don't see any real difference."

Andrea looked aghast at that. She adored kids. She'd wanted babies in our near future, although there was now a question hanging over that ambition.

"Now there's a betrayal for you," I said equably. I'd had many years to come to terms with it, although those terms included a complete lack of trust. "The park wasn't used much at night, and it was sheer coincidence that somebody discovered me before hypothermia did. Mother ended up doing time for child abandonment. I've never seen her since, so I don't know who or where she is, or how she finished up."

"Oh, my god!" she whispered.

"I was put into an orphanage and later transferred onto the foster care roundabout. It didn't take me long to realise that it was an eat-or-be-eaten system. Friends were just that -- until you had something they wanted -- food, clothes, toys, whatever. Then it was knife-in-the-back time. Adults were in it for the money and a comfortable ride, and sometimes just to have someone they could torment and abuse in the comfort of their own home. Most of the abuse was psychological, some physical -- although nothing that left any evidence. Over sixteen years, I discovered that the betrayal of any expectations and promises is the norm. I grew up in the system, so when I managed to blag my way out of it, I ended up taking it with me. I discarded some of it, some remains -- as you know."

I considered telling her about the terror of those years; the discovery of the real ugliness within people; the humiliations, pain and disgust they caused. But I couldn't reveal those things -- not to anyone! They were just history; part of the past.

"There was one good thing that came out of it, however," I continued. "I discovered that I could recognise the tiny signs that most people miss in others -- all the smallest, most subtle signs of guilt, false fronts, disguised motives or just the pleasure of getting something over on someone else.

"Luckily, I found a job which highly appreciates those skills. It's well paid, as you know, and it allows me to live a life pretty much like everyone else."

"I know you earn a good salary, but in the end -- and I'm not trying to disrespect you -- you're just an insurance salesman," she protested. "Why would they value those 'skills' as you call them."

"I never said I was an insurance agent. You know I always tell the truth, but people often only hear what they expect to hear. In actuality, I told you that I'm an ensurance agent."

She drew me to a stop. "What's an ensurance agent? I've never heard of it. Is that a real job? Is it even a real word?"

I grinned at her confusion. I knew she'd corrected the pronunciation of my job title in her mind when I'd first told her. Pretty much everyone did. I certainly didn't mind; it helped me keep a low profile -- which in turn helped in my work.

"It's what the company I work for calls it. I make sure that something does or doesn't happen, depending on the wishes of the client."

"So, insurance then, as I said?"

"No. Insurance pays out money if something happened that shouldn't have, like a fire or accident. Or should have happened -- anything from the delivery of an item or consignment, all the way up to an appearance on stage by a world-famous singer. Ensurance makes sure those do or don't happen, no matter what."

"So you're a deliveryman and nursemaid? I still don't get it!"

"In the past, I've made sure that a delivery arrived in the right place and on time. I've also made sure a delivery didn't turn up at all. It's more than that, though."

She stamped her foot. "You're not making sense! Explain it properly!"

I sighed and pulled her along into walking with me again. "Look, I'm not going to reveal any details, so I'll generalise, okay?"

She nodded, but I knew by the look on her face that she wasn't going to rest until she had the whole thing placed in her mind to her satisfaction. It's just who she was.

My breath steamed in the cold. "Imagine you've just discovered an app that makes phones operate faster and cheaper. It could make you an absolute fortune -- unless your competitors somehow got hold of it and reverse-engineered it. Now, you trust your staff, and probably the people who regularly go in and out of your offices. But how much should you trust them? Would they be susceptible to a bribe, or a touch of blackmail? Are they planted there by the opposition?

"I go in and look around. I chat with people. I watch them and what they're doing. I do a little background research. If I identify weak links, I then recommend taking them out of the loop, by limiting what they have access to, or by isolating them in some way from temptation. I report only to one person -- the person right at the top -- during an assignment, and I tell him or her that I will check them out as well. People do stupid shit all the time, and half the time they sabotage themselves.

"That's one scenario. In another example, let's say you have something rare and valuable -- something that other people would try to steal. Let's also say that you need to move it to somewhere else, maybe for an evaluation or a sale. Again, I go in and look around; see if there are any security gaps. I find where the weak links are and have them removed them from the chain. So, I ensure that things do or don't happen."

"Christ, I thought you persuaded old ladies to take out more life insurance, and it turns out you're some sort of secret agent type." She seemed very taken aback.

I shook my head and snorted at that idea. I'd been lucky to find the perfect niche in which to work. Then again, I thought I'd been lucky and found the ideal wife as well, but it turns out I might have been wrong.

"If it's all computer stuff, unless I meet the hacker, I can't help. But in more than ninety-nine per cent of the situations that I have to examine, it's the human factor that threatens to fuck things up -- like now."

She looked down at the ground, guilt on her face, until I continued. "Some people think the job sounds wildly exciting, but I don't carry a gun; I've never even fired one. I can't throw a 300-pound man over my shoulder - hell, I struggle to carry more than four bags of shopping.

"But that's not my job. My part of every assignment is to find betrayal before it happens, and if it goes sour before I can do my part, find out who caused it. Because I don't trust anyone -- including the people I work alongside or for -- I'm pretty successful. I usually find the weaknesses in people that would jeopardise a job's success. I can see it in their faces, the movements of their bodies, the way they sit still or fidget while at rest."

I'd discovered it in people unable to avoid looking at each other or ignoring each other too much. A sideways look, or a fixed stare while talking about things can reveal just as much. Hell, even dilating pupils or a casual wetting of the lips can tell all.

In actuality, I can almost smell it. Sometimes it seems the scent of betrayal is everywhere, like a dismal rank fog, threatening to choke me. I have to keep everything wrapped up very tightly inside; otherwise, it would overwhelm and consume everything that I am.

"Clients pay very well indeed for ensurance. It's not well-known or widely offered because wide-spread knowledge would make the job much harder. The insurance company came up with the idea of that position for me, when they recognised my talents, and realised they could make a lot of money from it.

"Sometimes it's complicated, and sometimes it's as simple as meeting a new applicant for a position to see if they're trustworthy. Of course, that's not as effective as it might seem, as I can only tell whether they are planning to cause mischief to the company at that moment. Today it might be no, while tomorrow everything may change. People change."

"Then they should have paid you more..." She trailed off as she saw something in my expression. Perhaps she'd subconsciously picked up some tricks from me.

"Oh my god!" she said, her eyes wide. "They do! They do pay you more! Which means... You've put it where I couldn't get at it, haven't you?"

That's my wife doing her thing again and solving puzzles.

"We live very well on what I put in the bank," I stated flatly. Then I surprisingly found myself continuing to flap my lips. Why would I need her belief in my honesty, when it could come back and bite me on the ass so hard? "Anything else that may or may not come into my hands may be helping to prop up economies in distant lands; very very far away. As I said, I anticipate. I can see betrayal before it happens."

Her eyes seemed almost luminous in the moonlight. Her voice was a whisper. "So, you could tell all along?"

I nodded. Andrea seemed more concerned with our relationship than my financial jiggery-pokery in hiding money where nobody could get at it. She wasn't particularly materialistic, and the desire for more wasn't much of a thing in her life.

"Why didn't you tell me all this? I trusted you to tell me the truth."

"I've never lied to you," I pointed out.

"Leaving out details like that is the same as lying," she hissed.

"I disagree. When we were first married, you used to ask me things like, 'does my bum look big in this?' and I always told you the truth. Eventually, you realised and stopped asking when you didn't actually want the truth. If I volunteered that opinion without you asking, it would have been the truth, but it would have been cruel.

"People don't like it when you tell them you don't trust them. They feel hurt, and because I understand that, I can live with keeping it to myself. When we met, and I fell in love with you, I wanted you to like me, to love me in the same way. So I didn't volunteer the information -- in the same way, I didn't like to tell you that a dress made your bum look big. It didn't hurt you -- or so I thought at the time. I never realised you were picking up on it."

She burst into tears. "I thought you didn't love me -- that it was all one-sided."

"Don't I show you I love you?"

"At times you seem so calm and cold, but I guess you do. It's hard to tell."

"Do you know I wanted you to be the mother of my children?"

"Yes." That came out suspiciously like a sob.

"Do we enjoy doing almost everything outside work together?"

"Just about everything."

"Do I tell you I love you? Do I tell you often?"

She nodded.

"Do I ever lie to you?"

After a moment, she shook her head, crystal icy tears flicking from her cheeks to sail like tiny melting icicles down her coat. "No, you don't. Never."

"I tell you, and I show you. You know I'm telling you true. So why would you think that I don't love you?"

"Because you can't love someone you can't trust."

"And yet, I do."

"But that doesn't make any sense."

I smiled at her. Her logic was very circular, very emotion-driven, while mine was more linear, logical. I do mask my emotions to a degree; controlling them, while not stifling them. But it doesn't mean I don't have them -- quite the opposite. I just keep them inside, locked tightly in a little ball -- under control, to be allowed out only in the right circumstances.

"You know what I felt when I discovered what you had planned?"

"Anger? Pain?" Andrea sounded almost defensive as if she didn't want to accept responsibility for those feelings.

Those had been the feelings I was going to mention. My words betrayed me however, slipping out before my brain could imprison them once again.

"Shame," I said, astonished to recognise it for the first time. "Deep, deep shame. The hurt and anger came later."

She looked devastated. I suddenly realised that she could handle me being angry and hurt. Rage made sense in those circumstances. But my shame was something so personal, so intimate and so profoundly wounding, that to understand she'd caused it in me cut her to the core.

"Oh, god, no! No! You did nothing to be ashamed of," she whispered, almost whimpered.

"I felt ashamed as a person." I could hear the wonder in my voice. Why would I feel that, of all things? Shouldn't she feel the shame, not me? So why...

In that instant, I felt my calm shatter. I'd held in all my emotions about Andrea's planned assignation so tightly to myself, compressing them into a smaller and smaller ball within my chest -- just as I always did when an ever-expected betrayal came about. There was no chance of it becoming a null point, however -- no matter how compressed that ball became. There would always be a point of critical mass.

When it let go, it was if a nuclear explosion had occurred within me.

I screamed -- the solitary explosive noise breaking the silence of the night apart as it broke me in the same way.

Andrea started to run, then she turned around and came back, her face a mask of desperate fear.

The emotions I had bottled up during a lifetime of betrayals seemed to explode into a screaming pinwheel of crystal fire, shattering from the centre in a detonation of shards into an expanding globe of rage. All the anger, the pain, at having to accept this life; a life full of disgust at what I had done, seen and experienced, even as I lived it -- it all exploded like a hurricane had set down within my soul. I found myself screaming, crying and laughing; insane laughter. I felt as if I floated upwards, viewing myself from above, as I bent over and then dropped into a crouch to beat my fists bloody against the frozen grass alongside the path. My head came up again, and I realised the tears of misery were all mine. I screamed at the darkness again and again at the shame of being weak, so weak. Too weak to control what I had become -- a frightened, angry, vengeful creature. And at the same time, too weak to reveal that part of me to her; that I had in reality been frightened of her knowing the whole of me; the real me, and it had pushed her away -- the woman I loved, the only person I loved in the whole world. I'd turned myself into an engine of self-fulfilling prophecy. That shame betrayed me, a betrayal I hadn't seen coming.

Andrea began to cry in turn, reaching out to me, and then drawing her hands back in uncertainty. When I didn't respond, she ended up wringing her hands together and sobbing, head down, her whole body shaking.

I wanted to let her cry, the hurricane within wishing to punish her for the hurt she had caused. But I just couldn't remain unresponsive -- even this deep within my pain. She was the only person -- the only living creature -- that I loved in the whole world, no matter her plan to cheat on me. I couldn't call it betrayal, as I had expected it, awaited it, and forestalled it -- which removed the vital triggering component of that act.

Her misery was so absolute it pulled me back from the brink.

After what seemed both an age and an instant, but which was somewhere in between, I stood, unbuttoned my long camel hair coat, drew her to me and wrapped it around her as well, creating a small intimate wigwam for us to share. I could feel her whole body shake and shudder as sobs wracked her, her hands clutching me tight around my waist, while my own gradually calmed and stilled.

The hurricane hadn't been defeated. You can't stop the wind. And in just the same way, I couldn't suddenly become someone else. It could be shielded, diverted, used to provide energy rather than destruction, but I couldn't change who I was at my very core -- a core that had been formed over a whole lifetime. The wind still blew.

I felt the dregs of the pain, anger and shame drain away during the epoch we stood there like that -- all the exploded shards drawing back together again like a film in reverse; back into that ball. It was much smaller now, and the likelihood of a secondary explosion was now a long, long way away. A large part of it had disappeared, like a suppurating wound drained, although the core infection remained. The self-fulfilling engine still idled quietly in the background, but at least I now knew it was there.

I was glad it was mostly gone. I had frightened Andrea badly, but I'd absolutely terrified the shit out of me.

"I'm so sorry I hurt you," she wept. "I'm so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted sex with someone else, even though that was the way I was heading. I just wanted someone to love me. No, that's not true! I wanted you to love me, but you didn't seem able to do that. You wouldn't trust me."

She cried herself out over a long time, then rubbed her face against my shirt, leaving a wet, sticky mess, and looked up at me.

"Are you going to divorce me?"

"No. Why would I?" Fear took a bump. I didn't want to be without Andrea. I didn't know if I could make it if she were gone -- yet another person on that long list of people who had disappeared from my life.