Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

Chapter Eleven

A silence between Nathan and me stretched for well over a month – and the frost of anger, incomprehension and unforgiveness crept into the crack and forced it wider. During that time, I was advised by my solicitor to accept my severance package, and the features editor of Vee’s paper rang me to ask if, in the context of the suicide of the minister’s wife, I might like to contribute a short, touchy-feely piece on being abandoned?

This polite request contained various pieces of trickery, not least the chance to expose the marital mishaps of an executive on a rival paper. When I said no, but I was happy to research and write a piece on the difficulties of being a political wife, the features editor’s interest disappeared. ‘Yes…’ He sounded vague. ‘We have our regular journalists to do that sort of thing.’

Then, one evening, Nathan turned up on the doorstep carrying a brand-new suitcase. With a stranger’s formality, he asked, ‘Can I come in?’

The mixture of hope and despair in my breast was unbearable. ‘Of course.’

He stepped into the hall and put down the case. It was clear that it was empty. ‘I need my things, so I thought I’d pack them up.’

My hopes took a realistic turn, and I said coldly, ‘Do as you wish.’

‘Fine.’

He went up the stairs to our bedroom and I went into the kitchen, where I could hear him moving around. Drawers were opened and shut, shoes hit the floor, a chair scraped. After a while I could not bear to hear those sounds. I scooped up Parsley, bore her into the sitting room, sat down in the blue chair and held her tight.

I tried to see events through Nathan’s eyes. I really tried to see what had changed, what had recast his philosophy – apart from the obvious excitement of sex.

On our twentieth wedding anniversary he took me out to La Sensa. (‘My God,’ exclaimed Vee. ‘He must have been taken out a second mortgage.’) He fussed over the choice of champagne, which was so dry that my mouth tingled. He picked up his glass. ‘I want to thank you, my darling Rose.’

It seemed to me that the boot was on the other foot. ‘I should be thanking you. You came to the rescue.’

It was not the right thing to say – but it was not so very heinous a slip.

Immediately Nathan frowned, and I rushed on, ‘You came to the rescue and taught me about real, proper love.’

‘Ah,’ he said, with the soft, private expression that belonged to me and the children. ‘I see what you mean.’

My relief that we had got over the misunderstandings that litter any marriage and had reached this point was overwhelming. ‘I love you, Nathan. You know that.’

He reached over, took my hand and kissed it, the seal on our bargain.

Eventually, there was the slither and clump of a suitcase being manhandled down the stairs and Nathan reappeared. ‘Rose, if you let me know when you won’t be here, I’ll arrange for the rest of the stuff I need to be collected.’

Parsley used me as a springboard into the garden. I rubbed at the pinprick of blood on my thigh left by her claws. ‘I take it you’re being let into Minty’s personal space.’

‘As it happens, yes.’

I took the opportunity to study my husband. The gleam that freshened his skin and straightened his shoulders was different. I closed my eyes and asked the question that I needed to ask more than once. ‘Have I become so undesirable, Nathan?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

I opened my eyes. ‘You do.’

‘No.’ His were kindly, and I was terrified that he was lying. ‘You are still… very lovely’ He gave a strained smile. ‘Your hair is still the same too. Still honey chestnut.’

‘Then why?’

He shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘I’m as astonished as you are. I never imagined that I would leave you.’

‘Then why, Nathan? Your reasons are usually so clear and thought-out.’

‘I know.’

I looked down at my hands, at the whorl of the fingerprint, at the heart-line, the life-line. Perhaps I had never known Nathan properly. Perhaps he had kept hidden from me a part secret to him. Probably. If I was truthful, there were the deep, dark spaces in myself of which he knew nothing. ‘Please think again.’ Nathan did not answer and I tried once more. ‘Was it when I started working?’

Those times when he came home and found me still in my office clothes, thin, exhausted, dervish-like, giving supper to one child, supervising the homework of another. Then he was pulled away from contemplation of his own day and forced to consider mine. Had he been panicked by this dull, dun, harassed creature? More than once he must have wondered if all women, all mothers, lose their sexual luminosity and turn into wild, anguished figures, and why the transformation should be so unfair to both parties.

On one of the worst days, when I was weeping from the battery and assault made on me by my children and by the work that Nathan had been against me doing anyway, he took me in his arms and stroked my hair. ‘Shush,’ he said. ‘We’re in this together.’

Now I said, ‘Ianthe thinks I didn’t help you enough. Is she right?’

Nathan shrugged. ‘God knows, Rose. There were times, yes, when I could have done with you more on side but I am sure it was the same with you.’

We were back on skates, veering round the rink, neither of us reaching the heart of the matter. Automatically, I rubbed my shoulder, which plagued me with stiffness, an on-going condition from too much typing.

‘Is it hurting?’

‘Yes.’

‘Badly?’

‘Actually, yes. I must have slept on it awkwardly.’

Automatically, Nathan moved towards me. If I rub here, is it better? Or here? At the last moment, he turned away.

‘Rose, I don’t know what to say about the job.’

‘Timon took a risk firing a group executive’s wife and replacing her with his mistress.’

‘They took a risk in taking you on in the first place.’

This was true. ‘They will pay me reasonably, if I go quietly and agree not to take on a similar job for six months. The usual thing. I will probably accept.’

He nodded. ‘Timon is anxious to push for extra numbers. There has been a lot of discussion and strategy meetings.’

Circulation, policy, revenues… Nathan and I were used to talking to each other on those subjects, and on those subjects Nathan trusted me. They sounded prosaic, but they were not. Revenue and circulation figures can be just as much of a glue as poetry and passionate sex.

People are rude about habit. It is supposed to suggest sloppiness and laziness, but I don’t think they have thought about it properly. Habit is useful and comforting: it rides over the bumpy bits, it is the track that cuts across hills and valleys and carries passengers safely through.

‘How are the figures?’ I asked, grown cunning and devious.

Quick as a flash, he replied, ‘I haven’t seen Wednesday’s but judging by…’ The sentence remained unfinished for Nathan suspected, rightly, that the old conversations might entangle us.

‘Nathan, Minty knew she would probably take over from me and she didn’t tell you.’

As cool as if he was negotiating, he had his answer ready: ‘Minty was protecting me. Chinese wall…’

‘Nevertheless, it was Timon who told you, not Minty’

The implications were obvious, and Nathan flushed a harsh red. ‘The situation was tricky and Timon had to think carefully how to play it. It was impossible for Minty to say anything.’

I drew an obscure and shameful comfort from this admission. Early on, Nathan and I had made a pact to tell each other everything.

‘Look on the bright side, then,’ I said, and hated what I was saying. ‘At least you didn’t have to worry about split loyalties between Minty and me.’

We stared at each other. In a low voice, Nathan admitted, ‘Minty’s secrecy should make a difference, I know, but it doesn’t.’

It was this extraordinary exchange that finally convinced me Nathan was serious. He loved Minty enough to be honest, so honest about her ambition and duplicity that he could not, would not, grant me the grace of a little verbal deceit.

I gave a shaky laugh. ‘And I had been preparing to forgive and forget.’ I went over to the french windows and looked out. Despite my efforts to dig it out the bindweed was back in force under the lilac tree and I wondered why, until now, I had failed to notice how invasive it had become. ‘I hope they don’t sack you, too, Nathan.’

‘Anything’s possible.’

‘Be honest, Nathan. Tell me what’s wrong.’ I wrapped my arms across my chest, ready to ward off the worst.

Nathan began to speak. ‘I can’t get over how much Minty reminds me of you when I first met you. You were so young, so hurt, but so determined that what you had done was right.’

I cried, ‘Minty is nothing, nothing like me,’ and my shoulders shook with the effort of not weeping. Nathan came up behind me and placed his hands on them.

‘Minty reminds me of how you were before… I don’t know, before we all changed. Became middle-aged, I suppose.’

‘But that’s not fair,’ I cried out passionately. ‘How could I not change? I am older. I can’t avoid that. Neither can you. I couldn’t avoid being changed by having children. Neither could you.’ Nathan removed his hands from my shoulders. ‘What have you been telling her?’ I asked. ‘What have you made up to convince her that you are so misunderstood? Or so she tells me.’

Nathan sat down in the blue chair. ‘Are you sure you want me to go into this?’

I turned round and faced him. ‘You might as well.’

‘If you must know, I told her that living in a crowded marriage is worse than being in a cruel one, and she looked at me with her great steady-as-you-go eyes. “But Rose is devoted to you,” she replied.’

‘She could not have said otherwise,’ I interjected. ‘She listened to me often enough.’ I turned my head away. ‘How could you have said it was “crowded”? I don’t understand.’

Nathan’s face darkened. ‘Whenever there was trouble between us, when one of the black periods that descend on all marriages descended on ours, I just could not get out of my head that you were taking refuge in an old love story and it was his image that comforted you. Minty said she was sure you didn’t know you were doing it.’

‘Nathan, I can’t believe you allowed it to matter. To be so afraid. To not trust me. At this stage, I’m far more likely to fantasize about a face-lift or writing a seriously good book than to hark back to an old love affair… however much it meant to me once. We don’t think like that any more.’ I swivelled on my heels to face him. ‘It’s a cheap excuse, and I can’t bear it.’

Nathan paid no attention. ‘I knew when that man bootlegged his way back.’

‘You are too clever for fantasy, Nathan.’

An obstinate look settled over Nathan. ‘I was up against a fantasy’

‘Nathan, I had left Hal for good when I met you. I had made a choice.’

‘So I thought. And I had just got it settled in my mind. Then… why did you tell Minty about it?’

‘Girls’ gossip. Not something you usually concern yourself with.’

‘Minty says I should. She thinks it’s good for my emotional health.’

‘And what else does Minty say? How else does she manipulate you? For that’s what she’s been doing.’

‘She told me that she has had a good time in the past, but it would not come with her.’

‘And that makes everything all right? That gives you clearance? Oh, Nathan, what a fool you are.’

‘Enough.’ Nathan got to his feet. ‘I’ll be going now.’

I kept my arms wrapped tight across my chest. ‘I see.’

Nathan picked up the suitcase. Then he put it down again. ‘This is dreadful. You won’t believe this, Rosie, but I love you very much, and I can’t believe how I’m making you suffer.’

I was not listening. I was searching for some logic in my dark, dark despair. For some guidance. ‘And she will help you in your career? Will she put in what I apparently did not?’

A faint smile flickered over Nathan’s lips. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘Minty’s very ambitious, you know. For herself

‘Minty is strong, energetic and free. It makes me feel that I can be the same.’

‘And she has style. It takes style to steal her boss’s husband and her job in the same breath. Economy and thrift, too.’

Nathan looked at me with a kind, caring look that suggested he did not expect anything else from me. I felt sick with humiliation. ‘Go away,’ I ordered him, ‘before I say something really awful.’

He turned for the door, halted and pulled an envelope from his pocket. ‘I nearly forgot, Rose. Here’s a cheque for the time being, to see you through until things are sorted out.’

‘I don’t want it.’

‘I expected you to be stubborn.’ He tucked it behind the vase on the mantelpiece that had belonged to his mother. It was a dreadful thing, early Rockingham, I think, stuck all over with china flowers that trapped dust, but Nathan cherished it.

‘Take the cheque back,’ I said.

‘No.’ He started when he spotted my wedding ring on the shelf, then picked up his mother’s vase. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll take this with me.’

At the front door, he placed a hand on the latch and pulled it down. ‘Rose, I know Hal was hanging around at our wedding. I saw him.’

I swallowed, and the burden of the past sat heavy on my shoulders. ‘He came to say goodbye, Nathan.’

Having no experience of what to do next after a husband has walked out finally (leaving a thoughtful cheque to cover contingencies) I wondered if Flora Madder had received a cheque when Charles Madder departed for the mistress with exotic tastes. Perhaps being paid off was the final straw that made her search for the rope and a revenge with a long tail that, for years to come, would lash at those left behind.

It was silent in the bedroom. The newly liberated Nathan had not bothered to shut the wardrobe door or close the drawers in the chest we shared. This was a piece of sentimentality left over from the early cash-strapped days when we had had no money and limited furniture. The symbolism of having our underwear so close together amused us, and we had retained the habit.

The drawers were half empty. Reasoning that it was wise to embark on an unavoidable painful process sooner rather than later, I shifted a folded nightdress into Nathan’s vacated half. The movement dislodged the lavender bags I kept tucked into the corners, releasing a spicy fragrance.

But even smells were a problem – too spicy, too evocative, too sickly-and I dropped everything, went downstairs and phoned Maeve.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to know how things were.’

‘Oh, Rose,’ she said, as if she was trying to place me – remember me, even. ‘How are you?’

‘Not terrific. I just wanted to touch base. See how you were. Perhaps have lunch. I owe you one and it would be on me. We could meet somewhere neutral.’

‘Things are very busy,’ she said quickly. ‘Timon is putting on pressure. We don’t have a moment to call our own. I suppose you want to know how Minty’s doing.’

The trouble was, I did.

‘Early days there.’ Maeve was guarded. ‘Look, I would like to have lunch… sometime, but I’m too busy at the moment to make any plans. The one free day I can see in the near future I’ve earmarked for the hairdresser. I must go. I need to get the grey hairs seen to.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘I daren’t let them show. But, Rose, do keep in touch.’

As usual, everyone’s coats were jumbled on the pegs by the back door. I shrugged on my old grey mac, which had seen many years’ tramping the cliffs in Cornwall, tied the belt round my waist and left the house. It was raining, a fine, penetrating drizzle that crept down my neck and back in a V of damp.

Panting a little, stomach growling, as it did these days, I walked across the park, stopping every so often because I felt so shaky, and plunged through the doorway of St Benedicta’s.

The nave and transepts were empty but there had been a wedding or a christening recently, because vases of white lilies had been placed on the font, on the altar, and in tiny bunches at the ends of the pews. Only one candle burnt under the Madonna whose pinkness glistened like the makeup of an ageing actress.

I had no idea what I was doing there, or what I hoped to find.

I extracted a candle from the pile, lit it and wedged it into the iron claw.

How was I going to get through this? Had I deluded myself that if and when the difficult times arrived I would cope? Now, at this moment, I possessed nowhere near the required reserves, or the courage. Search as I might for the brave face, I could not find it.

The candle guttered, flamed up, resumed burning.

When it was half-way down, I got up, brushed at the damp on my mac and walked back along the aisle. As usual, the table was littered with the hymn books and pamphlets. I did not think anyone would mind if I tidied them up.