Memory

Eventually, I went back to the computer and lost myself in page after page of French vocabulary. I had no idea whether it would work, but I was shit at languages and had always wanted to visit somewhere and speak to the people in their native tongue. After half an hour, I realised that I needed to study phonetic symbolism, spent three minutes on that, and then carried on a lot more comfortably with the French.

I was startled when my phone rang. "Oui allo? Daniel ici."

"What?"

"Qu'est-ce que tu veux dire, 'quoi'"

Hmm, I hadn't even thought about speaking in French. It had just poured out.

"Daniel?" Alice's voice. "Is that you?"

"Yes."

"Why did you answer the phone like that?"

"I was learning French."

There was a long silence, and then I heard a snort. "You're having me on."

I shrugged. "What did you want, Alice?"

"Erm... your brother was just here."

I was surprised; he'd taken action far sooner than I'd expected. "What did he say?"

"He never said a word. He just stood there, his face so red I thought he was having a heart attack. Then he slapped Rhoda so hard she fell over and dragged her out of the room. Should I call the police?"

"You sure you want to shine a light on that? I expect that would publicise your little secret, wouldn't it? Or did you really think that Alan's actions came out of the blue -- he just woke up and decided to take out his dissatisfaction with life on Rhoda?"

The pause was even longer this time.

"What do you mean?" she said finally.

"Come on, Alice. That's unworthy of you. You had to know the moment Alan appeared at a hotel miles away from where you were supposed to be that we'd learned all about your nasty little fuck-weekends."

There was the sound of a faint sob, and I could so clearly imagine her there, seated on the bed in her dressing gown. Her face would be pink, and her eyes red from crying. However, I felt little sympathy. Hell, for all I knew, she could be wearing a see-through satin chemise and be lying back comfortably with a glass of champagne and a huge smile.

"I'm sorry."

I sighed heavily. "Yeah, we're all sorry. And your apology and a fiver get us what?"

"So what do we do now?" she asked quietly after a long silence.

"We don't do anything. I will probably find somewhere else to live unless you want to move out and live with the syphilitic siblings."

"God no!" she stated emphatically.

"Hmm. There seems to be a distinct lack of emotion from you about them. So it was just for the fucking then? What, I didn't float your boat anymore? You were tired of mister vanilla?"

"Well, yes and no."

"What? Make sense."

"I love you, and I love making love with you. But they are the complete opposite of you in every way, and that made it exciting."

"Eeuw," I said, despite appreciating her honesty. But I hadn't considered that she'd been fucking both of them. That had never crossed my mind.

"Both of them? Really? God, I'm even more disappointed in you. How did I not see this need in you to pander to your most base urges? What next, are you going to go out and steal things, hurt children, torture animals, rape and murder people?"

"Oh, come on, Daniel. I admit I cheated on you, but it was just sex. I don't deserve that. I'm not that bad."

"I think you are. Your cunt wanted some strange dick in it, and you pandered to it. You happily went out and cheated, which is a primitive desire. It's the caveman part of your brain shouting, 'I want it, so I will have it, no matter what!' Cheating, theft, rape, murder -- they're all part of the primitive brain. That's why we don't do them -- and created civilisation to try and ensure that. It also means that the person who does do those things hasn't evolved enough -- doesn't have enough empathy to be civilised. Because the commonality in all those things is that when you allow yourself to do them, someone always gets hurt. The cost to the person doing it is often nothing because someone else always pays the price, in pain. And by your actions, you've shown that's who and what you are. I'm deeply disappointed in myself that I didn't recognise that."

"Oh, come on. That's ridiculous. I admitted I cheated on you. But I didn't try and kill you or steal from you or anything else."

"No, you just did the thing that would hurt me most. Worse, you deliberately planned it, carried it out and even got me to pay for it -- all the while knowing it would hurt me badly. I'm sorry, but I still don't see the difference. And if you think there is a lesser degree of pain in this situation that gives you salvation, then you're even further back down the path to that monkey brain than I thought."

"Alan, I never thought you would find out. I didn't set out to hurt you. I love you."

"You keep saying that, and perhaps you do. But you still did it happily and with malice aforethought; you never once tried to protect me from that cavewoman you have in there. Actually, I'm probably denigrating stone age people by saying that. Monkey-brain sounds better.

"Not to me," she said miserably.

"Nor me. I find myself married for the moment to a lesser-evolved human-shaped being."

"Stop it! That's not fair. You're just trying to hurt me."

"It's a fight or flight reflex, Alice," I said conversationally. "It's another part of that base brain, except this part tries to protect and survive when being attacked."

"I'm not attacking you. I never meant..."

"How did you think I would react on discovering that you were off sharing low-life threesomes with your sister-in-law every three months and amusingly getting me to pay in money and pain for the privilege of being cuckolded? Or when I realised you were pointing me in one direction and then going in another to hide your lowest urges? Or when I understood you were buying junk from the same shop around the corner and pretending you'd dug it up in various places along your antiquing trips? Did you imagine I would carry on and ignore the whole thing? Or did you assume that I wouldn't care and might even be delighted that you were finally able to satisfy that arboreal primate within you? No. No matter how you look at it, you set out to attack me."

"I didn't! I didn't think any of those things. I thought you would never find out, so I never considered any of those questions. And it never crossed my mind that you were paying for my cheating; it was just part of our budget. How did you find out? And why are you talking like this? I've never heard you talk this way. Where is it coming from?"

"An ordinary evolved mind, Alice. Your instincts took you back to a primitive base, and mine assisted me along to a better future. Now, knowing that, is there any reason you can think of why a primate and I should remain together? I can't see you staying with me as a pet -- what if you devolved further?"

She was crying hard now.

"You're being so horrible," she sobbed. "I wish you'd just slapped me as Alan did to Rhoda. I probably deserve that, but this... this is just cruel!"

"Logic combined with that fight or flight. That's all. Any cruelty you feel is simply your reaction to my point of view. I'm sorry Alan hit Rhoda; I imagine both needed to reveal their pain and sorrow, him at her actions, and then her at his reaction. That's not my way."

"It was your way. You fought for me back in school. You fought for me and won me. It was exciting."

"So..." Her words left me breathless for a moment. "So, I had to continue fighting for you not to cheat? Is that it?"

"Well, no. But it meant so much. It meant you loved me more than anything or anyone else."

"Then let me ask you this. Who did you fight for me?"

There was a long silence as she came to realise the untenable position in which she'd put herself.

"I'm sorry, Daniel. I'm so sorry."

She hung up.

I didn't phone back. I guess I hadn't loved her as much as I thought I did. Perhaps being together for as long as we had had just worn that golden shine down to a patina -- although I expect that happens with most couples. Either way, she wasn't special to me anymore, just... ordinary. Just a woman you would pass in the street without thought or consideration. So, in the end, despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth from Alice -- and admittedly a few misgivings and thoughts of forgiveness from me - we headed to the divorce courts.

I had thought of taking some sort of revenge on the Tosspots but then realised how impossible it would be. They'd farmed all their lives, so physically, they were likely to be even stronger now than they'd been as teenagers, and I no longer owned a cricket bat. More importantly, a closer look on Google maps revealed that their crops probably mainly consisted of dirt, and the farmhouse they shared with two wives and a horde of badly-dressed rag-tag kids looked more like the remnants of a gipsy camp than anything else. There was nothing I could do to them that could possibly make their lives any worse. I imagine that the quarterly visits to their village by my wife and sister-in-law were probably the brightest highlights in their whole miserable lives -- Christmas, Easter, Guy Fawkes, and New Year all run together into two nights. Perhaps that's why the Morris Dancers had turned out in celebration.

Alica and I agreed amicably enough on splitting up the assets for the divorce, despite my absolute insistence that she kept all the crap she'd brought home from their 'antiquing', and she continued renting the house. I moved out and found my own place.

Alan and Rhoda had a rough time for several years but eventually settled down again after my brother had and then regretted a four-month-long affair of his own, making them equal in both their minds.

I lost a few friends over the months before and after the divorce, but it wasn't for the reason I thought it was. It had nothing to do with my broken marriage.

"I don't give a shit about your divorce," a mate of mine explained when I queried it with him. "She was cheating on you, and you divorced. It's not the first time it's happened in our circle, and I've learned not to take sides. No, the thing is, you've become a bit of a prick -- a pretentious and arrogant prat. Whenever we get together, I have the feeling you look down on the rest of us, although you try and hide it. We went to school together ever since we started primary, and we both got the same education. So what's with the superior attitude and talking down at us, like you know so much more than the rest of us?"

"Home-schooling" was the only answer I could give at the time. But thinking about what he'd said made me realise he was right. There was nothing wrong with him as a friend, but I had been treating him and the rest of the people we hung around with as less intelligent and almost uneducated. I had indeed become a complete and utter prick!

Yet I couldn't change back to the person I'd been before the whole mess started -- the happily stupid unknowing cuckold who just ran lightly over the surface of life, leaving hardly a ripple in my wake. I couldn't do it for them, and I wouldn't consider trying it for me. I refused to be that person anymore. My mind had been awakened and stretched, and I certainly wasn't going to give up the marvellous gift that Sean had given me, so I did the only thing that made sense.

I left my old life behind.

After starting on a very unsuccessful diet and simultaneously 'developing' mild arthritis to get an ongoing repeat prescription for the two medications, I moved on. After a few months noodling around Britain, I moved further afield, ending up travelling the world and making a living in many countries as an English, History or Geography teacher. I would spend several hours on the laptop when I arrived and afterwards usually managed the local languages pretty well.

In Taiwan, I met and fell in love with a tiny university professor. She was a local, and her real name was Mei-Ling, which means beautiful and delicate and was entirely appropriate. However, most Taiwanese people have Anglo names as well, and Kitty was the name she habitually went by, which matched her nature perfectly. She was lovely to look at but bristly and stand-offish at first. However, after we got to know each other, she became playful and always affectionate and loved being rubbed and caressed while sitting on my knee or lying on top of me -- small enough for both of us to be perfectly comfortable. The rest of her preferences were all human -- in the form of me -- which was precisely how I felt about her, so we matched perfectly.

After we married and moved to Australia, my nieces and nephew, individually or together, would come over and stay with us in Sydney whenever they could spare the time to take a holiday. Sean is delighted that I can talk to him on the same level about his astrophysics research and rocketry designs.

However, we never discuss the pills, and I've never seen any rumours on the net. Perhaps those that know the secret also know they would be back to square one if everyone else knew as well. After all, who would stand out in a whole world full of Einsteins?

And as for Alice? As lovely as it would be to imagine she pined away and died miserably without me... She finally met and married a farmer who wasn't a Talbot, raised a step-family and is pretty happy with an ordinary life.

Eventually, I apologised to her for cutting her down so sharply during that phone conversation. I assured her that she wasn't really a genetically deprived throwback or a base criminal, just a greedy, spiteful and selfish person. Somehow she didn't see that as much of an apology, but I didn't feel the need to take it further.

I've heard that she doesn't antique anymore, and every stick of furniture in her house is as brand new as they can afford.

Memories aren't always sweet.