"Christopher Evans - Fidelity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Christopher)

Fidelity
a short story by Christopher Evans

When Malcolm came down with the news, Neal had already been at work for
two hours and had finally got his new novel moving again after a sticky
patch. Malcolm sauntered into the room and said, in his offhand manner:
"Claire's in hospital. Attempted suicide."
It was the kind of bad news he had almost expected.
"Is she all right? What did she try?"
"Pills. They've pumped her stomach and she'll be OK. The hospital says she
doesn't want to see you."
His immediate reaction was one of annoyance that he'd have to suspend work
on the book just when he had it moving again; but his irritation was
quickly swamped by his concern for Claire.
"Can I take the car?"
"Feel free," Malcolm said.

It was a two hour drive from the lodge to central London. Neal would have
liked company for the journey, but Malcolm was negotiating an import deal
for Korean antiques and he hadn't wanted to impose further on him. He had
been staying at the lodge for the past week, having fled there immediately
after his latest bust-up with Claire to subsist on Malcolm's ever-generous
hospitality. The basement room was hermetic and he'd produced some of his
best work there. He and Claire had regular fallings-out and he felt
greatly in debt to his wealthy patron. "Don't worry," Malcolm would insist
whenever Neal showed up, as big-hearted as he was large of frame. "Stay as
long as you want. You know how much I enjoy having you around". Malcolm
would then tell him that the only way he could really repay him would be
to abandon Claire and become his lover, a submission he was
constitutionally incapable of making.
This was the third time Claire had attempted suicide. Doubtless, like the
two previous occasions, it was more a dramatic gesture, a plea for
attention, than any serious desire to end her life. Claire was a gifted
poet, but highly emotional and unstable. At his meanest Neal would accuse
her of having a Sylvia Plath complex. They had been living together, on
and off, for six years--periods of blissful emotional and intellectual
harmony interspersed with dreadful fights provoked by Claire's hysterical
reaction to even the mildest of criticism. He had lost count of the number
of times he had walked out on her in anger, only to relent days later
under the pressure of her pleading, apologetic phonecalls. They were
slowly tearing one another apart, locked in an insane, destructive passion
for one another.
The poet and the novelist. Their liaison had enchanted the more upmarket
gossip columnists with its glittering surfaces. In an age of few
celebrities, with the arts teetering on the brink of sterility, suffocated
by the palliatives of the Welfare State, their brilliant partnership had
received close scrutiny from the news-starved media. They chronicled its
vicissitudes with a tedious diligence, providing vicarious excitement for
the vast majority of people who led quiet, well-tailored lives, content in
their anonymity.