I once found myself drifting through a strange, swirling dream, where I was with a man named Henry. Henrywith his neatly combed hair, pressed trousers, and notions of romance from another agebelieved wholeheartedly in love. He was always the sort to help neighbours with their shopping, to set out scraps for the stray cats that prowled the garden wall. Handsome in a gentle way, he had his own small flat just off Piccadilly, a reliable car, and a respectable job at a firm whose name dissolved whenever I tried to recall it.
In the haze of the dream, it felt as though fortune itself had arranged our meeting. Henry asked me to be his wife, and I accepted, certain I was the luckiest woman in England. My friendsPolly, Hazel, and Junegathered around me with their endless mugs of Earl Grey, casting envious looks and whispering, almost chanting, Mind you, dont let a man like him slip by.
Of course I tried to keep hold of him, and he seemed ever eager to cling to me as well. But in dreams, happiness is as delicate as a porcelain teacup.
One evening, after the clouds outside had taken on the colour of stewed tea, Henry came home looking as gloomy as a rain-soaked cricket pitch, unable to meet my eyes. I pressed him, my questions slipping and sliding around him like fish in the Thames, until at last he confessed. He had bumped into my ex-husbandjust stumbled across him, or so he said. The truth, though, was slippery. I hadnt seen or spoken to my ex in months, hadnt even shown Henry a photograph. How could Henry have recognised him in the mist of the city, unless hed gone searching?
And here, the logic of the dream warped and twisted. Henry had actively approached my ex, drawn to him like a moth towards a flickering streetlamp. Over shared cigarettes in a place that seemed to shift between a pub and a railway platform, their conversation turned inevitably to me, as though there were no other subject in all of London.
I had always told Henry everything; I trusted him. So what could they possibly have to say about me? To say I was stunned is to say nothing at allmy head rang with the strangeness of it. Later, Henry admitted he never should have done it, but the harm was done. Hed asked my ex-husband everythingwhat I was like, why wed separated, all those old wounds peeled back and prodded.
I found myself weeping, tears running silently down my cheeks like rain on a windowpane. This felt like a strange betrayal, a breach of trust that echoed oddly in the corridors of the dream. I was right therewhy not ask me anything he wished? Was it really all right, in this upside-down version of England, to go behind someones back like that?
My ex-husband, a shadowy figure with a voice like distant church bells, had spun some nonsense about me I could barely remember upon waking. Yet Henrypoor, fretting Henryasked if the accusations were true. Why must I defend myself against fabrications conjured out of London fog? Why must my voice twist around their gossip?
Suddenly, I felt respect crumble away like an old stone wall in the rain. I could forgive the elderly ladies who huddled outside the post office, gossiping over the price of apples. But Henry was no old woman; he was supposed to be my partner, my equal, my confidante. Why did he have to dig and pry behind my back, choosing the wordless shadows over honest conversation?
He had chosen me. We lived side by side, shared toast and marmalade at breakfast, and yet never had I given him cause to doubt me. In the irrational logic of the dream, this act became something so low and muddy I felt the ground give way beneath me. There was no apology that would mend it, no forgiveness sprouting in that barren soil.
Id always thought that, should someone speak ill of a mans beloved, hed at least stand indignantperhaps even have a row about it, as Englishmen sometimes do. But to actively seek out exes and rummage through the past for gossip? That was beyond rational complaint.
So in a rush of dream-madness, Henrythe perfectly proper groomfell from grace in my eyes. The wisdom of the past floated by like the reflection of a rooftop in a London puddle: A family must be built on respect. Perhaps my boundaries are narrow, but I could not abide a man who trafficked in rumours and acted like one of those nattering old biddies. Men might be entitled to their tears, their tempers, their foolishnessbut to live on rumours and whisperings, never!
