Past Imperfect Read Online Free

altogether.'
    'Did you marry?'
    'Once. It didn't last very long.'
    'I'm sorry.'
    'Don't be. I only married because I'd got to that age when it starts to feel odd not to have married. I was thirty-six or -seven and curious eyebrows were beginning to be raised. Of course, I was a fool. If I'd waited another five years, my friends would have started to divorce and I wouldn't have been the only freak in the circus.'
    Was she anyone I knew?'
    'Oh, no. I'd escaped from your crowd by then and I had no desire to return to it, I can assure you.'
    'Any more than we had the smallest desire to see you,' I said. There was something relieving in this. A trace of our mutual dislike had surfaced and it felt more comfortable than the pseudo-friendship we had been playing at all evening. 'Besides, you don't know what my crowd is. You don't know anything about my life. It changed that night as much as yours. And there is more than one way of moving on from a London Season of forty years ago.'
    He accepted this without querying it. 'Quite right. I apologise. But, truly, you would not have known Suzanne. When I met her she was running a fitness centre near Leatherhead.' Inwardly I agreed that it was unlikely my path had crossed with the ex-Mrs Baxter's so I was silent. He sighed wearily. 'She tried her best. I don't want to speak ill of her. But we had nothing at all to hold us together.' He paused. 'You never married in the end, did you?'
    'No. I didn't. Not in the end.' The words came out more harshly than I intended but he did not seem to wonder at it. The subject was painful for me and uncomfortable for him. At least, it bloody well should have been. I decided to return to a safer place. 'What happened to your wife?'
    'Oh, she married again. Rather a nice chap. He has a business selling sportsware, so I suppose they had more to build on than we did.'
    'Were there any children?'
    'Two boys and a girl. Though I don't know what happened to them.'
    'I meant with you.'
    He shook his head. 'No, there weren't.' This time his silence seemed very profound. After a moment he completed the thought. 'I can't have children,' he said. Despite the apparent finality of this statement there was something oddly unfinal in the tone of his voice, almost like that strange and unnecessary question mark that the young have imported from Australia, to finish every sentence. He continued, 'that is to say, I could not have children by the time that I married.'
    He stopped, as if to allow me a moment to digest this peculiar sentence. What could he possibly mean? I assumed he had not been castrated shortly before proposing to the fitness centre manageress. Since he had introduced the topic, I didn't feel guilty in wanting to make a few enquiries, but in the event he answered before I had voiced them. 'We went to various doctors and they told me my sperm count was zero.'
    Even in our disjointed, modern society, this is quite a taxing observation to counter with something meaningful. 'How disappointing,' I said.
    'Yes. It was. Very disappointing.'
    Obviously I'd chosen badly. 'Couldn't they do something about it?'
    'Not really. They suggested reasons as to why it might have happened, but no one thought it could be reversed. So that was that.'
    'You could have tried other ways. They're so clever now.' I couldn't bring myself to be more specific.
    He shook his head. 'I'd never have brought up someone else's child. Suzanne had a go at persuading me but I couldn't allow it. I just didn't see the point. Once the child isn't yours, aren't you just playing with dolls? Living dolls, maybe. But dolls.'
    'A lot of people would disagree with you.'
    He nodded. 'I know. Suzanne was one of them. She didn't see why she had to be barren when it wasn't her fault, which was reasonable enough. I suppose we knew we'd break up from the moment we left the surgery.' He stood to fetch himself another drink. He'd earned it.
    'I see,' I said, to fill the silence, rather dreading what was