Free Infidelity by Hugh Mackay

behaving badly. (I wished I had not dredged up that word ‘reckless’. It was a word I was becoming fond of; a word I now wanted to associate exclusively with Sarah.)
    Chastened by the experience with Myra, I believed I had become a tougher and more clear-sighted person than the one who fell into that little honey trap. And I couldn’t imagine anyone more different from Myra than Sarah. Was that why the existence of Sarah’s husband – even if husband in name only – nagged at me in a way that the existence of Myra’s husband never did? If I had allowed myself to think Myra’s infidelity was only a problem for her, why couldn’t I adopt the same position with Sarah? Why was the possibility ( was there a possibility, even now?) of a relationship with Sarah so utterly diminished by her husband’s existence? Why couldn’t I accept Sarah’s own assertion that that was her business, not mine; her own private moral maze?
    I knew why. If I were to love Sarah, it could never be as a secret lover, preserved exclusively for her London life and put back on the shelf each weekend. After all, I thought, don’t lovers have rights as well as spouses – especially terminally ill spouses? Especially neglectful, abusive and indifferent spouses? Wouldn’t there be a kind of infidelity about betraying such a lover’s trust? Sarah, I knew, was not a woman I could love part-time or half-heartedly.
    Yet what did I really know of all this, and how could I have been so soon thinking of possible arrangements – practical and emotional – for a life lived with a married woman? For all Sarah’s disclaimers, Perry was enough of a husband to draw her down to Littleton every single weekend, and I had only her word that the marriage was a sham. At least she had been upfront about her attachment to the house. I couldn’t imagine myself feeling like that about bricks and mortar, but I didn’t doubt the sincerity of Sarah’s need for ownership of that house.
    The more I pondered all this, the more I simply distanced myself from the complexity of it and gave myself up to simple gratitude to Sarah for levelling with me. She didn’t have to. She didn’t need to. She had laid it all out for me with her characteristic transparency. Why should I doubt her motive? She had said she simply wanted me to know exactly what I was getting myself into, if I was, indeed, getting myself into anything.
    Part of me wanted simply to embrace the thought that, yes, I was getting myself into something. The moral maze? I knew the conclusion I wanted to reach; my problem was working out how to wind back from there to where I was now – how to find a moral justification for that conclusion. I amused myself by reflecting that this was hardly a unique problem in the history of the world, from warfare to commerce.
    All the time – all the time – I knew I must not pursue her, yet I desperately wanted to pursue her. I wanted to be in love with her, without restraint. I wanted her to be in love with me, unencumbered. Even with those encumbrances, I wanted her to be in love with me. I thought that would clarify everything. Perhaps I did think too much. Didn’t some Scottish philosopher – David Hume, perhaps – insist that reason ought always to be the slave of the passions? I’d never been much drawn to that idea until now.
    Hours went by. When I began to drift towards sleep, two thoughts came to me. The first was very strange. It was that if Perry either owned this apartment or had given Sarah the wherewithal to purchase it, then I was here courtesy of the magnanimous Perry. The second thought banished the first: it was that ‘let’s see what happens’ made perfect sense. What other justification did I need to sleep there, at least for that one night?

7
    S unday night. Installed, definitively, in Sarah’s guest room at Vincent Square, my suitcase and