… because what had I given Connie, after all? The benefits for me were clear, but throughout our time together I had seen the question flicker across the faces of friends and waiters, family and taxi-drivers: what’s in it for her? What does she see that so many others have missed?
It was a question that I was unwilling to ask her myself, in case she frowned and had no answer. I believed — because she had told me so — that I offered her some kind of alternative to the men she had known before. I was not vain, bad-tempered, unreliable, temperamental, I had no drug or alcohol issues, I would not steal from her or cheat on her, I was not married, bisexual or manic-depressive. In short, I lacked all the qualities that, from her teens into her late twenties, she had found irresistible. I was unlikely to suggest that we smoke crack, and though this seemed to me a fairly basic, entry-level requirement in a partner, it was at least one I could fulfil. Point one in my favour: I was not a psychopath.
It was also clear to everyone that I loved her to a quite ridiculous degree, though devotion is not always an appealing characteristic, as I knew from experience. Then there was our sex life, which, as I have mentioned, I think was always more than satisfactory.
She had always been interested in my work. Despite its frustrations, I retained my belief in scientific endeavour and I think she admired me for this. Connie always said I was at my most attractive when I talked about my work, and she’d encourage me to describe it long after she’d ceased to comprehend the subject matter. ‘The lights come on,’ she said. As the nature of my employment changed those lights flickered somewhat, but initially she valued the many differences between us — art and science, sensibility and sense — because after all, who wants to fall in love with their own reflection?
More practically, I was practical; adept at basic plumbing and carpentry and even electrical wiring, and only once was I thrown across the kitchen. I could walk into a room and spot a load-bearing wall; I was a meticulous and thorough decorator, always sugar-soaping, rubbing down, always rinsing out my brushes. As our finances melded, I was diligent and thorough in ensuring everything was in place: pensions, ISAs, insurance. I planned our holidays with military care, maintained the car, bled the radiators, reset the clocks in spring and autumn. While there was breath in my body, she would never lack sufficient AA batteries. Perhaps these achievements sound drab and pedestrian, but they were in stark contrast to the flaky, self-absorbed aesthetes she had known before. There was a sort of mild masculinity to it all that, for Connie, was both new and comforting.
More thrillingly, I was extremely reliable in a crisis — changing a tyre on the hard shoulder of the M3 at night and in the rain, aiding an epileptic on the Northern Line while others sat and gawped; everyday heroism of a very minor sort. Walking on the street I always took care to be nearest to the kerb and though she laughed at this, she liked it too. Being with me, said Connie, was like carrying a large, old-fashioned fire extinguisher around with her at all times, and I took satisfaction in this.
What else? I think I offered my wife a way out of a lifestyle she could no longer sustain. The Connie Moore I’d met had been a party girl, always dancing on tables, and I think I offered her a hand down to the floor. She gave up the notion of making a living as an artist, for a while at least, and took to working in the gallery full time. It must have been hard, I suppose, promoting the work of others rather than producing her own, but her talent would still be there, she could always go back to it once we were settled, once her style of painting came back into fashion. In the meantime we still had fun, terrific fun, and there were dinners with friends and many late nights. But there were fewer hangovers, fewer dawn regrets, fewer mystery bruises. I was the safest of harbours, but I do want to emphasise that I could be fun, too. Not in a large group perhaps, but when the pressure was off, when it was just the two of us, I don’t think there was anywhere we’d rather have been.
