The Note

The Note

March 1966

A NOTE IS

slipped under her door.

your husband is sleeping with one of his students

There is no capital letter at the beginning, no full stop at the end. The handwriting is squiggly, in fine black ink. The tail of the ‘y’ flicks sharply to the left.

In a way, it is kind. Whoever wrote this note wants Bridie to know that her husband is not faithful, to end the humiliation. But Bridie knows. She knew about the first one, six months into his post at Birmingham; she knew about the next one, too, their next-door-but-one neighbour; she knew about another, who was an old friend from his school days. There may have been more in between. And what makes Bridie feel so worthless is not that her husband is unfaithful to her, nor that it is not the first time, it is that she feels nothing at all. It is as though she has jumped into a swimming pool with all her clothes on, her heaviest wool coat, her jumpers, hats and scarves, wrapped and wound around her. All of it weighing her down, and she has sunk down to the bottom of the pool. And there she is on the cracked, tiled floor; she cannot get lower.

She takes a single deep breath and goes upstairs to Alistair’s mahogany office.

She walks in without knocking, and he turns, surprised, and then frowns at her for the disrespect she is showing him by barging in uninvited.

Bridie places the note down on the desk, and he glances at it, skimming. Then he stops and picks it up. Looks closer, turns it, as though it has more secrets to reveal.

‘How old is she?’ Bridie asks.

He looks at Bridie, and perhaps he sees the steel she feels within her. ‘What?’

‘Is she a teenager?’

‘Every student here is an adult and capable of making their own choices.’

‘How old is she?’

‘You think this is true?’ He tries out an incredulous, jovial laugh, to see if he can convince her. To see if he can convince himself. And he can’t. He slides the paper back towards her. ‘It’s just a joke, a student prank,’ he says.

‘I have a meeting in ten minutes. I just want to make sure she’s an adult.’ Bridie looks at her watch, and Alistair seems surprised to see no emotion in her.

He doesn’t speak. ‘I—’

Bridie interrupts, ‘I just want to make sure she’s not a child.’

‘There are no children here.’

‘You know what I mean. I want to make sure she’s in charge of her faculties. A woman. A postgrad at least, not a homesick eighteen-year-old who thinks you hung the moon.’

Alistair arches an eyebrow. She has bested him. Beaten

him at his own game, because she knows, and there is no scene, no drama, not a tear. For so long, he has treated her like she does not matter, like their marriage does not matter, and she has begun to believe it to be true. He seems disappointed by this. That he cannot trick her into believing it is a joke, that she will not cry or beg or communicate how important he is to her by showing her devastation at his infidelity.

‘She’s twenty-three,’ he replies.

‘Fantastic.’ Bridie lets the heavy mahogany door thud behind her.