Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

Chapter Two

Six hours later we were in bed, and Nathan laid his hand on my breast in the old familiar way. There was no trouble and no barrier. It was as easy as silk sliding over silk, and I wrapped my arms and legs around him and drew him down. Afterwards, he murmured, ‘That was nice,’ and drifted into sleep.

I should have dropped off too, for we had been out late at a company dinner, but I was too tired for sleep – a hangover from the days of having small children. Recollections of the evening threaded through my mind, cobwebby, not important, but there.

‘The works,’ Nathan had ordered, as he plunged barelegged around the bedroom in his socks. He gave off an air of I-have-too-much-to-think-about, and I fetched his shirt for him. ‘Best bib, Rosie, and glam. Otherwise these damn politicians think that all we’re capable of is rolled-up sleeves and eyeshades.’

Occasionally, Nathan’s fixed ambition nettled me: it was so set, so immutable, so… predictable, and I had lived with it for a long time. Selling your soul was one thing; having the greater portion of your home life dictated by a newspaper was another. Then I reminded myself that, in my own way, I was as committed to my job, and the irritation never lasted long. I helped him on with the shirt and did up the top button. ‘Darling, that’s only in Hollywood.’

Only Nathan called me Rosie – I would not allow anyone else to muddle around with diminutives. ‘That’s because roses are too beautiful and important,’ Ianthe had once told me. ‘Roses are the only flowers that have never had a nickname. No heart’s-ease or Dutchman’s breeches for the rose.’ She was holding me tight after an adolescent wobble in confidence. ‘Roses rustle in the wind and smell of heaven. They are tokens of love, as well as grief. Think of that.’ Goodness knows what she based this on, but her words flowed through me, gelled, and prescribed the manner in which I perceived my name and, I suppose, myself.

Nathan was different. He could call me what he wished.

I had put on a sleeveless black sheath, which was a little too tight, and high heels. My hair needed cutting but I had had no time recently to get to the hairdresser so I bundled it up into a chignon – not the most flattering style but it would do.

With Nathan’s hand tucked under my elbow, we walked into the smart restaurant, the kind featured in magazines that existed to make their readers miserable because their own lives were so far removed from the fantasies on the pages. It was awash with silver and glass and exquisitely coloured blush ranunculus in white vases.

Peter Shaker and his wife Carolyne were already there with a young rising star called George from the financial department and his pregnant wife, Jackie, who both looked nervous. They were hammering into the champagne. Although we were not intimates, we knew Peter and Carolyne quite well: Carolyne was also in a black shift and high heels, but she is tiny and dark while I am tall with chestnut hair so the effect was different.

Carolyne kissed me, more or less affectionately. Over the years we had seen a lot of each other at company dos, but that was all. In the beginning Carolyne, who did not have a job and was an über-wife, asked me to accompany her to several afternoon charity functions, which I always had to decline, and therefore, too, the possibility of friendship. Since then, whenever we met, I could not help feeling that Carolyne, whose home was immaculate, whose two daughters won scholarships to their secondary schools and made their own clothes, was making a point about our respective choices. In the nicest possible way, of course. She was, she implied, a Good Wife. Women are as competitive as men but their subversions are better hidden and sometimes their competitiveness is, curiously, a sign of affection.

While we waited for our guests – a couple of politicians and Monty Chavet, an author who specialized in insider exposés of Westminster – we drank more champagne and exchanged company gossip.

‘Have you seen this week’s figures, Nathan?’ inquired Peter. He stood boldly in front of Nathan, legs a little akimbo. When he was younger, Peter had been painfully thin but, with the growth in his confidence, he had put on weight, which suited him.

Nathan frowned. ‘We’ll have to talk about last week’s dip -’

Before the numbers game could begin in earnest, the other guests arrived and I found myself sitting next to a junior health minister, whose name was Neil Skinner. He was pale-skinned and red-haired, with the sort of lips that cracked easily in the cold, which could not have been good for winter television appearances. I found myself pitying him: his ambitions were so transparent, and health such a difficult portfolio – only for political suicides. We plodded through the highways and byways of his career, and then he asked, ‘What do you do?’

‘I’m the books editor for the weekend Digest.’ Oh, books, said people I met at social events, you’re so lucky. Have you met Salman Rushdie?

‘And a very good one,’ Monty cut in. He was talking to Carolyne but listening to our conversation at the same time. It was how he found his material, he had once told me. ‘Best pages in town.’

‘Oh dear,’ Neil Skinner frowned, ‘you must think I’m very stupid.’

My lips twitched and I wondered who suffered from the worst inferiority complex: the politician or the journalist? Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Nathan being his most charming with the second and more senior politician who, rumour had it, might make the cabinet in the next reshuffle. As usual, he was utterly focused and alert. ‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘Why would I?’

Neil tapped his glass with a finger that I could swear had been professionally manicured. ‘Isn’t it difficult working for an outfit that can do such damage to people?’

I looked into the pale eyes and replied truthfully. ‘Sometimes.’

He leant forward and refilled my glass. ‘But you do it?’

‘Yes, but I believe in my bit and I think you have to hang on to that.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘we have something in common.’

A sixth sense told me now that Nathan was not asleep, he was too still, and I flipped over to face him. He was lying stiff and straight under the duvet, not in his usual akimbo style. I laid my palm on his chest. ‘Are you worrying about something?’

There was a silence. Then he shifted on to his side so that he was turned away from me. ‘Of course not. Go to sleep.’

‘Nathan?’ Our pillow-talk was usually conducted face to face and this was when we exchanged snippets that we were supposed to keep secret. ‘We’ve got a nasty exposé coming. A minister, actually’

There was a grunt. ‘I know. Timon warned me. It’s Charles Madder. They’ve been working on it for months. Had a whole team on the case.’

That meant at least six people had gone through whatever material they could lay their hands on, dustbins, past records, that sort of thing, and probably kept a watch. ‘Neil Skinner asked me if I minded working for an outfit that could do so much damage to people.’

‘You could ask the same question of politicians.’

‘True.’ I shifted closer to him and slid my arm round his waist. ‘Even so, I don’t like to think about what’s going to happen to that home.’ I kissed his shoulder, the bit where it begins to curve down into the arm. ‘Death is supposed to be the worst thing to happen, the event that tears out your heart, but it must be far crueller to be made a fool of by the person you loved and trusted. At least if someone dies you can shape them up nicely in your memory.’

‘If you can’t stand the heat, Rose, you know what to do.’

I pinched the edge of his pyjama top between my fingers. ‘Hey, there’s no need for the Gordon Gekko act. We’re in the privacy of our own home.’

I was expecting a laugh. Instead, Nathan repeated, ‘Go to sleep,’ and edged away.

I drifted and dreamed, moving in and out of memories, drowsing in scenes of past family life, for things had changed at Lakey Street. The children’s growing up and leaving home had left a space in our married life. Or, rather, it had hauled up an anchor and sometimes I worried that it had left Nathan and me curiously untethered. It was not surprising that from time to time we were taken by surprise at having to make adjustments.

Which was different from the early days, when we had expected a challenge.

When I climbed the steps on to the plane in Brazil, I was so weak that my legs shook. I had lost a lot of blood and the doctor warned me snappishly that it would take time, given my foolishness.

The cabin smelt of plastic with an underlay of sunburnt flesh and businessmen’s aftershave, and was artificially cool. As it was high summer, it was full of families with screeching children and backpackers who had drunk too much beer, heading home to grown-up life. It was going to be a long, trying journey to London.

I found my seat by a window, and dropped into it. There was a smear of dust on the pane and I rubbed it away with my finger. A bus disgorged yet more passengers who filed up the steps. Quite a few were elderly, kept back, I supposed, so that they could take their time in getting on.

My finger traced a pattern on the window. Old people did not feel so acutely, did they? The prick and burn of guilt and longing had dulled, their nerve endings had worn away. I wished that I had left behind the years of feeling, stepped over them and gone on to the next stage.

Figures darted to and fro on the liquefying Tarmac outside. Inside I was liquefying, too. I could not remember ever crying as I was now – the tears seemed unstoppable. I stared out of the window, and they dripped down my cheeks, along my chin and made a right angle down to my neck where they pooled on my sodden collar. My nose streamed.

Goodbye, sweet.

The Brazilian sky, which had been hidden from us in the jungle, had never seemed so blue. When it grew dark in the jungle, fireflies gathered on the branches in glowing necklaces that wove in and out of the leaf canopy.

‘Look,’ said a male voice in the next seat, ‘you’re probably trying to hide it, but I can see that you’re crying and in need of a handkerchief. Please take mine and I promise not to notice.’

Something was placed in my lap and my fingers encountered a square of cotton, so soft it must have been washed a hundred times. It felt so civilized, so clean and domestic. I grabbed it. By the time the aircraft rolled out of its berth, it too was sodden.

We had been airborne for half an hour or so when, eventually, I was sufficiently in control to thank my rescuer. He was a little older than I, and neatly turned out in a linen shirt and pressed trousers, but painfully sunburnt on his neck and hands. He had a briefcase, supple and beautifully sewn, which looked expensive. He was reading a paperback with careful attention. I knew this was intended to reassure me that he would not force his company on me.

‘You have been very kind,’ I said.

He glanced down at the wet ball in my hand. ‘Please keep the handkerchief.’

‘I’m so sorry I’ve disturbed you.’

His smile almost suggested that he welcomed the idea of a female weeping over him. I noticed, too, that he smiled properly, with his eyes as well as his lips. ‘If it’s any comfort, I’ve encountered far worse. So carry on, if you want to.’

I took him at his word, and continued to cry sporadically for most of the flight while he read his book on South American politics, scribbled in the margins then ate his meal and mine.

After the trays had been cleared away, he asked, ‘Would you like my shoulder sleep on?’

Feeling rather foolish, but too exhausted to argue, I accepted and soon slipped out of my anguish. When I woke, we had flown into the night and my companion was asleep too, his shoulder still supporting me.

As the aircraft began its descent into Heathrow, the shockingly dull brown and green patchwork of Middlesex framed itself in the plane window. He adjusted his seat into the upright position. ‘It is, of course, perfectly possible that you’re upset over the state of South American politics – don’t look so surprised, some people are. I am, and I would be happy to tell you about it sometime. Or, having murdered a tax inspector, you’re going home to face prison. Or perhaps you have had to say goodbye to a member of the family and you will never see them again, but I think it’s more likely that it has something to do with a love affair.’ I said nothing. ‘He must be a rat,’ he remarked. ‘I’d never give up a woman with hair like yours.’ There was nothing to be said to that either.

The runway roared up beneath us, and the plane touched down, bounced, and taxied towards the terminal. ‘Would you like to share a taxi with me into London?’ he asked. ‘Don’t worry about the cost, I’m on expenses.’

Too tired to care about anything, I accepted. ‘I’ll try not to cry’ I looked out at a grey, sodden sky. ‘Do you always deface your books?’

‘Only if the contents aren’t up to it.’

‘Poor book.’ It was how I felt too. Failure tasted and felt terrible.

‘My name is Nathan Lloyd.’ He held out his hand. ‘What’s yours?’

I told him.

At seven thirty we were woken by the phone. Nathan groaned and reached out. ‘Yes,’ he said blearily, then snapped to attention. ‘OK, Peter.’

I slid out of bed. I knew the form. There was a crisis and Nathan was required in the office. War had been declared, a royal had misbehaved, a libel writ had been slapped on his desk. We had lived through them all several times. The curious thing about human behaviour was that it went on happening, despite everyone knowing better.

I pulled on my dressing-gown and padded down the stairs to the kitchen, stopping on the landing to take a look in the mirror that hung there and smooth my hair behind my ears. I remembered the cartoon joke where the woman looks into a mirror and exclaims, ‘Hang on, there’s some mistake. ‘I’m much younger than this.’

The years had nibbled away the clear-cut contours and it was a high-risk strategy to get straight out of bed and count on looking fine. No, more than that: it was impossible. Although I liked faces that were blurring into softness in exchange for the willow sheen of youth – Ianthe, for example, was much more interesting to look at now than she had been at forty – it took a bit of getting used to. I had not reckoned on being more self-conscious at forty-seven than I had been twenty years earlier: I had always imagined that in that respect being older was liberating. But it was not, and it went without saying that it was not a subject I discussed with Nathan.

In the kitchen, I snapped up the blinds, and the room was swathed in a weak sunlight. I drew a deep breath. It was going to be a day of pottering in the shed, getting through tasks that never got done if the weather was too cold.

I set a couple of rashers of bacon in a pan to fry, laid the table, squeezed fresh orange juice and made the coffee. I loved my kitchen. It was my locus in which I took endless pleasure, and I filled it with cream and white objects, jugs, bowls, china, which I had chosen carefully over the years. My dressing-gown flapped against my legs as I moved around tidying, putting dirty mugs into the dishwasher, folding unironed laundry into a pile.

When the bacon was crisp, I heated milk in a saucepan, catching up the skin in a spoon, then called Nathan. He came winging into the kitchen in his dress-down office trousers and jacket. Already his mind was fixed on business. The transition of Nathan, the junior political correspondent whom I had met on the plane, to deputy editor, had been hard-fought. Once, when I asked him if he minded that he no longer foraged for stories in the field, no longer wrote the articles, he replied that as he could not remember what it had been like he could not miss it. That had made sense.

I poured him coffee and sat down opposite him. ‘Wish you didn’t have to go.’

He shrugged. ‘We all know the form. Shouldn’t take all day, but I’ll let you know’ There was a pause. ‘Where will you be?’

I glanced up at the window. ‘I’ll do some chores, then if the weather holds I’ll be in the garden.’ The garden was mine, and I spent any spare time in it. Nathan hated anything to do with soil: his role was to sit in a deckchair and make comments.

He finished his bacon and reached for the toast. ‘The garden will bankrupt us,’ he said.

‘It’s going to be wonderful this year. You wait. I’ve done marvels.’

‘That’s what you always say.’

‘And it’s true.’

A faint early-morning smile crossed his face. ‘Yes, it is.’

Nathan and I rowed over me tramping through the house with bags of mushroom compost and manure – and yes, I did make a mess. We rowed over the money I spent on plants, and we rowed because I refused to take a holiday when the Paeonia suffruticosa shook out its skirts to reveal its secret, bloody stains.

He did not like it when I read gardening books into the night, keeping him awake, and he complained bitterly when I ordered a tiny fountain to be constructed in the garden. That had been a Pyrrhic victory, for the fountain was a source of endless trouble, requiring regular maintenance and cleaning.

Yet they were good rows, the kind that people who live together should share. They raised the whirlwind, shook the furniture and vanished, leaving calm. Nathan and I were happy to occupy opposite sides of the garden fence over which we could shout at each other.

The hot milk had grown a second skin so I fetched the strainer then refilled Nathan’s cup. ‘Have you phoned Poppy yet?’

In May she would take her finals at Nottingham University, and neither of us was convinced that she was doing any work. Nathan had resolved to give her a lecture, although I had argued that, at twenty-two, Poppy was free to choose what she did with her life, and Nathan had argued back that, in that case, she choose between my position and his.

‘I haven’t but I will,’ he said irritably. ‘This evening. Don’t go on about it.’

‘I’m not going on about it. I’m just reminding you.’

I poured myself some coffee and Nathan went upstairs to do his teeth. A little later he came clattering downstairs, shouted goodbye and the front door closed.

Another Saturday.

I looked at my coffee. Flat platelets of skin were floating on its surface, leaving a trail of fatty bubbles in a grey liquid. I threw it away.