Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

Chapter Thirteen

When I was pregnant with Sam, I swallowed iron pills, poured milk down my throat and avoided wine, coffee and curry. I slept in the afternoons, visited the dentist for regular check-ups and every week I consulted the manual as to what had happened to the bundle of cells, then the miniature footballer, that I carried. I told it that I was doing my very best to give it a sporting chance, that, however tedious, I realized my relinquishing of favourite foods and other little adaptations of behaviour were vital to its future. And how time spun itself out. How each week dragged its feet into the next.

Time dragged now. March limped away. April and May were slow, oh, so slow. June came, and my hard gestation of grief showed no sign of ending.

The oldest memories are so much sharper and clearer than the near past and, thinking over this hypothesis, I could see that this was – partly – what Nathan had battled against when meeting Minty had forced him to take stock. He chose to believe that those sharp old memories meant more than the blurred, tumbled, frantic moments of our family life. He feared that my sweet, vivid awakening into sexual passion and love with Hal had greater staying power than my years with him.

Robert Dodd, the solicitor, and I stitched up the final strands of my severance package and I signed a document agreeing that I would not take up a similar job within six months. The trade-off was a reasonable, but not generous, sum of money.

‘Must be nice to have six months.’ Robert allowed himself to show a glimmer of frank envy.

‘I might be back,’ I told him, ‘for the divorce. But I hope not. I hope Nathan and I can work through this.’

He smiled with professional detachment that suggested experience had taught him otherwise then showed me out.

Sam made a point of coming up at weekends, and for the May bank holiday he brought Alice with him. I slapped on lashings of red lipstick, too much, and made them a supper of chicken breasts seethed with garlic and fennel, and pushed a piece around my own plate.

Apart from pointing out that I should try to eat more and drink less, Sam was quiet, but Alice made up for it. Smart as paint in a grey suit and gold jewellery, she questioned me closely as to what had happened at work. ‘I hope you made them squeal,’ she said at last, fiddling with her bracelet. She had painted her nails with a shiny, clear gloss, which made her hands look efficient. Then she asked which I minded more: losing my job, or my salary, and it struck me that, on this subject, Alice was vulnerable. It was also a good question. ‘It must be difficult,’ she said, ‘not to have a financial base. If you have no money you have no power, and it is others who drive the negotiations.’

‘Experience counts for something,’ I pointed out.

She smiled disbelievingly. ‘Not enough.’ I liked Alice better for her honesty, but she was straying close to the bone. I tried to change the subject and asked her if she had seen Spielberg’s latest film.

‘Alice couldn’t possibly spare the time.’ When he wished, Sam had his own brand of irony. ‘Her power base demands all her attention.’

Displaying her efficient nails, Alice raised her wineglass to her lips. ‘Jealous, Sam?’

Yet when we said goodbye Alice surprised me by giving me a kiss: brief and businesslike, but a kiss all the same. ‘I shall think of you, Rose,’ she said. ‘I really will. I’m sorry about… Nathan.’ She meant it, and I found myself kissing her back.

Unlike Alice, I had plenty of spare time at my disposal and, a past-master at tweaking my conscience, Mr Sears made use of it.

Apart from taking him Sunday lunch, my charity consisted of tossing coins into hats held out in the streets and responding irritably to telephone requests for donations, but the image of Mr Sears sitting each day in his fuggy, dingy room was not easily dismissed. Cross and snippy as he could be, his right to more pricked away at me like a thorn. In the end, I told him I was taking him out. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said, which, considering he had not left the house for three years, was pretty cool. Somehow, I bullied the reluctant social services into providing a wheelchair and a carer for a few extra hours. ‘Call this a bus?’ he said, when the single-decker drew up. She and I manhandled him on to the number eighty-eight, where he was completely happy. The three of us did a double run, which took most of the day, and he sat by the window, treating us to a running commentary on a cityscape in which familiar landmarks, mostly pubs, had been transmogrified into bars and grills. ‘What’s wrong with a pub? If you wanted a cup of coffee you nipped up to the Kardomah.’

It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Mr Sears concluded, given the treacherous pace of change, he was better off in his room.

The second that finals were over, Poppy materialized at Lakey Street and unloaded her possessions all over the house. In a lightning procedure, she repacked her suitcase, kissed me goodbye and demanded money for a taxi to the airport. ‘I forbid you to worry,’ she said. ‘Worrying is for wimps.’

That weekend I bought a copy of the papers and the Digest. Until then, I had not touched it, but I wanted to see the worst for myself. I carried it into the park and walked up and down, gathering sufficient resolve.

Whatever else she might be, Minty was professional. The pages were different but fine: more celebrities, more photographs, and more books covering a younger age group. Yet I had not been entirely obliterated, for Minty had built on what had been there, but my ideas no longer held the centre stage. It was a kind of compromise, a nod to the relationship we had once shared.

Astonishingly, as I read on, I felt not jealousy but a growing detachment from that which had previously absorbed me. A small Martian in a shiny helmet and knee-pads streaked along the path, followed by a puffing adult. I followed their progress, feeling that on this subject I could breathe more easily, and I seemed to have been granted a respite from professional rivalry. It was not that I did not care, but I did not care so very much any more.

I turned to the other sections. ‘Where Will Our Staff Be Heading This Summer?’ ran one feature under a shrunken map of the world. The city editor was going to Martha’s Vineyard, the features editor to Tuscany (naturally) and the books editor was planning two weeks on a remote Greek island. The article included a photo of Minty dressed in a scoop-necked top and skimpy skirt. ‘Kea is really hot and secluded,’ she was reported as saying. ‘Nothing but sea and sand.’

I reread that bit twice. Minty was not aware, or had not troubled to find out, that Nathan hated heat and would almost certainly be extremely bad-tempered on a tiny Greek island.

A breeze gave the pages in my hands a life of their own. A woman now struggled along the path with two children in a double buggy. A dog ran past with the anxious loping gait that suggested it had lost its owner.

Poor Nathan.

I checked myself. There was a sad little law that applied to abandoned wives: if they were not careful, they fed with appetite on their usurper’s mistakes and shortfalls. Her taste is vulgar… she poisoned the guests… she’s nasty to the children. I had seen it operate through Vee and now I spotted the early signs in myself. Not – as Poppy had a habit of saying.

I dropped the papers into the nearest litter-bin and continued on my way. In future, I would not bother with it.

Recent rain had turned the grass boggy. Over by the river, a maple had shaken out its new foliage and under it bloomed a clump of late tulips. I bent down and examined the nearest. Its stamens were swollen and sticky, and greenfly had taken shelter inside on the smooth, convex curve. Insects and bell-shaped petals appeared so still, so set, like a piece of Rockingham china. Like Nathan’s vase.

My calm vanished. It never took much, just a nudge, a glancing allusion, and I was plunged back to picking myself up when Nathan had left.

Longing for an away-day from myself, I turned for home. The breeze had freshened, and I pulled my sweater down over my hands. Then I heard it. Click. Click. For a second or two, my mind slipped free of the net in which it was caught and I glimpsed the prospect of release, a future where I would be empty and clean. It was the cool, fresh wind blowing through a sickroom. The promise of rain over a parched landscape. The splash of a fountain. It was only for a moment and then I was back, plodding with muddy shoes over the wet grass.

When I woke on Monday morning Parsley was not on the bed. I went in search of her and found her stretched out on the blue chair. ‘Parsley?’ She did not respond. She smelt odd, and her flanks were labouring. With a shock, I realized she was in pain. ‘Parsley…’

On my last visit to the vet, Keith had warned me, ‘You can’t expect miracles at her age.’ But I had. I did.

I stroked one of her paws. I knew her well enough to understand that she would not want me to interfere, and she would wish to handle her diminution and death in her own cat terms. I knew, too, it was useless to imagine that behind the green eyes lay an emotion as deep for me as mine for her. I tried again. ‘Parsley’.

My voice penetrated her shadowy limbo. With an obvious effort, she raised her head and looked at me, the one who loved her most.

When he saw me with the basket in the waiting room, Keith’s eyebrows climbed towards the haircut that the family swore was based on Henry V’s portrait. It is the type of haircut that people, having spent their youth being disgusting, adopt when excess has become too exhausting. Keith had the perfect look for a vet whose functional, clinical rooms sheltered the love, nonsense and wild feelings between humans and their animals.

I coaxed Parsley out of the basket. Keith placed a bony hand on my shoulder. ‘You know what I’m going to say, Rose. I could pump her full of vitamins and antibiotics, which would boost her for a day or two. But that’s all you can steal at her age.’

He pressed my shoulder and I turned away. Where were the family?

‘Do it now,’ Sam would be likely to say.

‘No, not yet. We have no right to intervene in a natural process.’ That would be Poppy.

Nathan would ask, ‘Exactly how long does Keith think he can keep her alive?’

‘All right,’ I said to Keith. ‘But quickly, because she’s frightened being here.’

As gently as we could manage, we wrapped Parsley in a towel. She struggled briefly and Keith shaved a patch off her front paw, bent his Henry V head and kissed her. ‘Ready?’

I would never be ready but I held my cherished cat as the needle slipped in. That much I owed her. I owed her far more but there was nothing I could do to pay the debt. Parsley was the companion to maternity, noise, children: a silent, sensuous, feminine commentator. A witness to a heated, physical, domestic world.

Almost immediately, her head sank back against my shoulder. The green eyes widened, let in the light, then dimmed, shuttered, and Parsley went into the night.

Keith stood back and I cradled her until the final rill of pulse fluttered to a standstill.

Back home, I carried Parsley into the garden and laid her under the lilac tree beside the black hellebores and double anemones. Then I went upstairs to Poppy’s room and searched in the chest for the white wool shawl in which I had wrapped my shouting babies and walked them up and down to hush them.

I fetched the spade and fork and dug into the knotty, insect-ridden, bindweed-infested earth. The fork tines severed white, stringy roots and drove the insects from their subterranean refuges.

A fine and private place. Parsley.

Forget the click in my mind, the cool promise of the future. I had had enough. I wanted my grief dead, my longings finished, my body shrouded from the gaze of others.

I dug on.

I was burying a past, a marriage, a job. That funny, exhausted, desperate slice of my life when Parsley slunk beside me on paws that clicked on the stone and wooden floors and kept me company through the night when the children cried and Nathan slept.

When the hole was large enough, I laid Parsley in it, and I fussed over the ends of the shawl, wrapping it round until I was satisfied. The wool was soft, the texture of much washed baby-clothes, and still retained that faint, oh-so-suggestive smell of yeasty, milky children.

I threw in a spadeful of earth, then a second.

Parsley’s grave did not take long to fill in.

I told myself I should eat something, but I had lost the habit of regular meals. Anyway, my fingers were stiff and ice cold. I poured myself a large slug of whisky, which finished the bottle, and dragged myself upstairs to bed.

During the night, I was violently sick. Panting and covered in sweat, I sat back on my heels. I was burning, burning up. In my haste, I had blundered from my bed into the bathroom without switching on the light and the neon glimmer from the street painted the porcelain a thin, unappealing orange. I pressed my hands to my face.

I was slipping. Where had I read that women who were slipping drank too much, wept too much, wore too much lipstick, dealt with their solitariness in empty neon-lit rooms?

At dawn I was sick again, and a pain in my stomach took up residence. By morning, I had a raging temperature and I spent the day huddled in bed. On the second day, my temperature rose even higher and I floated through the fever, in and out of heavy but fitful sleep. I could feel my heart thudding and banging in my chest. Was I dying from grief? Was I dying because I had been discarded? From time to time, I imagined the telephone rang – but it was the church bell tolling for my father’s funeral.

Nathan materialized in my dreams. Tall and drivingly ambitious. ‘I am going to leave you, Rose,’ he said. I told him that he already had. But it’s not that easy, Rose.

During this exchange I appeared to have grown a pair of wings and rose above Nathan, who vanished into a dot.

Now Minty poked and tugged at me. She seemed unsettled. ‘What do you think of me, Rose? What do you think of your former friend?’

‘If you must know, I think you’re ignorant,’ I replied, adding kindly, ‘but it’s not your fault. Wait until you are older.’

Big tears splashed down her face. ‘I refuse to get older. I shall always wear tiny tops and short skirts.’ I shook my head, and she wailed, like a child, ‘It’s so unfair.’

With a mighty beat of my excellent wings, I soared up into the sky, which had replaced the bedroom ceiling. Far below, Minty’s wet, upturned face was as flat and featureless as a swamp.

‘Rose…’

Nathan was bending over me and I blinked. My tongue had turned into felt, and my lips were so cracked that I tasted blood, and it seemed to be evening. ‘What are you doing here, Nathan?’

‘You look awful.’ His eye lit on the thermometer by the bed. ‘Here, stick this in.’

I tried to raise my head. ‘Can’t.’

He took a step back. Nathan was one of those men who hated anyone to be ill except himself, and he was never at his best in these situations – ‘You’re not that bad,’ he would protest, if I dared to mention that I was not feeling up to scratch, and assume his suffering expression. For a day or two, there were sighs and looks that meant, I am carrying this family entirely on my shoulders. Pretty soon after that, he developed identical symptoms, which were worse, much worse than yours, Rosie. As a result, I rarely took to my bed. Anyway, mothers do not have time to be ill.

‘We’re on our way to dinner with Timon and I thought I’d just check as I’ve been ringing and ringing.’

‘I’ve been ill,’ I pointed out helpfully.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I’d better get some help.’ He disappeared and, a few minutes later, reappeared with Minty.

I was too weak to feel rage, too distanced to care that she was there. They conferred in the doorway… temperature… awful… doctor. Minty shifted from foot to foot and threw me pointed glances from those slanting eyes.

I made a huge effort. ‘Nathan, could you get me some water?’

It was always a smart move to give a Nathan a task. It settled him.

While he was gone, Minty maintained her distance. ‘I wasn’t going to come in,’ she confessed. ‘Nathan made me. But I wouldn’t have done…’

I closed my eyes. ‘I don’t care what you do.’

She was silent. I opened my eyes. She was examining the room – a glimpse of Nathan’s remaining clothes through the partially open door of the cupboard, a photo of Sam and Poppy, taken in a rare moment when they were enjoying each other’s company, a stack of books on Nathan’s side of the bed. There was a hungry, siphoning look on her face, and I knew she was trawling for the clues she needed to understand Nathan.

It was then I realized how deadly intent on Nathan she was, how elated by the task of making it work but also secretly terrified at how little she knew.

I could not blame her for wanting Nathan. How could I? I wanted him too.

But this was the Minty who had said, ‘Commitment? Don’t make me laugh.’

She must have read my mind. ‘People do change, Rose, particularly if someone like Nathan is involved.’ She fussed with her jumper, a low-cut blue mohair that only just reached her waist. Every time she moved a little flesh was revealed. You can look at me, she was saying, my beauty and ripeness, and you may envy and desire. ‘I’m twenty-nine,’ she said, in a wondering voice.

With a huge effort, I turned on my side and blotted out the sight of her.

‘You’re very thin.’ She bent over and smoothed the damp sheets with a proprietorial gesture. ‘You should take more care of yourself.’

I was almost choked by fever and hatred. ‘If you have any shred of compassion, go.’

Her heels clip-clopped down the passage, leaving me to reflect tiredly on the objectives that Minty had once professed to despise. Years of marriage – the sporadic wars, ententes and a deep, protective peace. Nathan had married a girl in jeans who turned into a mother, who turned into a career woman who wore trouser suits, carried a book bag and read office memos. From time to time, this woman had congratulated herself on juggling these various states and emerging sane and optimistic.

Quite soon after our marriage, Nathan had abandoned the safari jacket for double-breasted office suits, the trouser buttons gradually let out. Some days he arrived home whistling under his breath, a sign that he felt happy and confident in his decisions. On others, I caught him staring out of his study window as he puzzled over problems. Sometimes he worried about money and we made lists of how to economize. A few of those were still stuck up on the fridge with magnets, turning yellow. In the summer, he sat in a chair in the garden and watched me at work. In winter, he begged me to make shepherd’s pie and chocolate pudding. To keep me going, Rosie. (More letting out of waistbands.) We ate at the table in the kitchen, discussed our children, discussed our ambitions. As the children grew up, we had more energy, talked less of domestic matters and more of politics, newspapers and the troubled state of the world – a regular airing of each other’s mental geography, which had seemed right, natural and happy.

‘Here we are. I’ve made some toast, and got you some aspirins.’ Nathan set down a jug on the bedside table. ‘Should I feed Parsley?’

The mention of her name brought instant tears. Nathan knelt down beside the bed. ‘Rosie, what is it? Are you in pain?’

I told him and he said, ‘Poor old Parsley,’ and stroked my cheek.

‘Will you do something for me?’

‘If I can.’

‘Brush my hair. It feels dreadful.’

Nathan reached for the hairbrush, propped me up and settled me back against his shoulder. The bristles scraped through hair as lank as tow. ‘She had a good innings, Rosie.’

I wiped my face with the sheet. ‘That makes it worse. I assumed she’d be around for ever.’

‘Do you remember when she went missing and I found her in that strange house, the one with the creeper growing over the windows?’

‘I found her,’ I murmured. ‘You were at work.’

‘No, it was me.’ He paused. ‘You’re pinching my memories.’

I twisted my head to look up at him. ‘So I am. But you pinch mine.’

He bent over and his cheek rested against mine. ‘So I do.’

‘Nathan?’ Minty called from downstairs. Nathan stopping brushing but I allowed myself to relax against his shoulder.

‘Nathan…’ Minty materialized at the door, and the dark eyes narrowed angrily. Perhaps she was looking through a tunnel to the light at the end, which shone on the past, against which she must compete. ‘Nathan, we’ll be late for Timon.’ As she turned to go, the blue jumper rode up over the taut stomach.

Instantly Nathan disengaged himself and stood up, my tall, driven, ambitious husband, who knew what he wanted, who until this point had been sane and predictable. I turned away my face because I could not bear to see the change in him.

‘Coming,’ he said.