Free How to Be Good by Nick Hornby Page B

haven’t communicated that properly or positively.’
    â€˜No. Well. Thank you.’
    â€˜And I’m sorry that I said I wanted a divorce. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’
    â€˜Right.’
    â€˜And will you come to the theatre with me tomorrow night? I’ve booked tickets for the Tom Stoppard. I know you wanted to go.’
    The theatre has provided David with more rant material than probably anything else in his ranting career, with the possible exception of the Germans. He hates the theatre. He hates the playwrights, he hates the plays, he hates the actors, he hates the critics, he hates the audience, he hates the programmes, he hates the little tubs of ice-cream they sell in the intervals. He once tried to write a column explaining why he hated safety curtains, but he couldn’t quite find the requisite 800 words.
    â€˜Oh. Thank you.’
    â€˜I’d like us to go to bed and sleep in separate rooms, and wake up in the morning and try to start again from scratch. Rebuild our lives.’
    â€˜Right-o.’ He probably thinks I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. A daft, cheerful phrase like ‘Right-o’ seems, at that precise moment, the only appropriate response to David’s blithe, bland suggestion, ignoring as it does all the complication and bitterness of the last few years of our lives together.
    â€˜Good. I’m going to bed, then. Good night.’ He comes over and kisses me on the cheek, hugs me, and starts to walk upstairs.
    â€˜Which bedroom are you sleeping in?’ I ask him.
    â€˜Oh. Sorry. I don’t mind. Which would you prefer?’
    â€˜Shall I sleep in the spare room?’ I don’t mind either, and anyway,it seems churlish to ask this polite, accommodating man, whoever he is, to move out of his own bed.
    â€˜Is that what you want?’ But he says this solicitously – he’s double-checking, rather than drawing attention to his hurt at my desertion of him.
    I shrug. ‘Yeah.’
    â€˜OK. If you’re sure. Sleep well.’
    Â 
    When I wake up I’m almost sure that I will be greeted with a snarl and an insult, possibly followed by a request to vacate the house by the evening, but he makes me tea and toast, pours the kids their cereal, tells me to have a nice day. After work I go straight home, we eat an early supper, and go out to the theatre. He asks about the surgery, even laughs at a story I tell him about a guy with a chest infection who had no idea that smoking really was bad for one’s health. (I can’t make David laugh. Nobody can make David laugh, apart from the people he is prepared to concede are funnier than him, namely, Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Tony Hancock and Peter Cook, 1960s model. Making people laugh is his job.) We go by Tube to the theatre, and he continues in this vein: he’s friendly, curious, he listens, he asks questions, he buys me one of the much-despised tubs of ice-cream. (True, he buys it for me out of my money – it transpires that he has forgotten his wallet – but the point is not that he is being generous, but that he is choosing to overlook one of London theatre’s myriad crimes.) I’m starting to feel giddy; I’m also starting to get confused about who I’m with. This is what Stephen’s like, this is why I was seduced into the idea of Stephen in the first place, and I’m worried that the contrast between my lover and my husband is becoming blurred. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is the most vicious and manipulative thing David has done yet: pretending to be a nice person so that . . . what? So that I’ll be nice back? So that I’ll want to stay married to him? Is that really so vicious and manipulative, trying to make one’s marriage function properly? In most cases one would argue not, but my mistrust of David runs very deep.
    *
    I love every second of the play. I drink it, like someone