Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

Chapter Five

I couldn’t explain it – I never could when he did it: Nathan went absent. He simply folded his mind into a secret place and disappeared inside himself. It was a habit of his, and it was particularly noticeable when he was nerving himself for a confrontation at work.

‘Not one of the children?’ I demanded, with the flash of fear that always lay waiting.

‘No, nothing to do with them.’ Nathan appeared to be in need of something to do with his hands, and he stuffed them into his pockets. It was the gesture he had used when he demanded that I marry him. Then, his pockets had practically disintegrated from tension and imperatives – ‘Say yes. Now.’

He began to speak, thought better of it, and tried again. ‘Rosie, we’ve been happy, haven’t we?’

Words can be spoken, they can be written in Gothic script, they can be sung, and we all agree to agree on what they mean. Yet their real meaning is in how they are said.

‘Haven’t we?’ With astonishment, I realized that Nathan had pronounced those words with finality. Alarm and bewilderment began to grate in my stomach. I replied. ‘Yes, we have.’

‘First of all, I want to say that I have been happy with you. Very, very happy. Despite my not being your first choice, so to speak.’

‘Nathan…’

‘Let’s establish it, I have been happy. Despite… everything,’ he muttered.

‘What are you talking about?’ I stared at him, and comprehension crept in. ‘You’re not on about that again? I can’t believe you’re still going on about a love affair that… Everyone has a love affair before they get married. You can’t possibly imagine… or think…’

‘Only because you do.’

‘I don’t. I promise I don’t.’

‘Oh, come on, Rosie. We know each other well enough. The truth?’

I swallowed. ‘I suppose I do, very occasionally, think about Hal, in a remote way, but only to remind me of how happy I am and how much I love you. Occasionally, I think, what if, but only if we’ve had a row. It’s harmless, foolish stuff. Why are you bringing this up? What’s happened?’

He grabbed my arm, and his fingers bit into the flesh. ‘No regrets?’

I smiled up at him, tender and committed. ‘You know there are not.’ ‘You silly,’ I added. ‘You know how grateful I am, what you mean to me. The children, the house. Our life. Us.’ I touched his lips with a finger, outlining their shape, gently, softly. ‘Why don’t you go and have a bath, Nathan, and I’ll get supper?’

It was not quite true about the regrets. No life, or decision, is possible without a few, at least I don’t think so. But I kept mine private, those memories of being careless and ignorant – not even Vee or Mazarine knew about them. Certainly not Nathan. Regrets are a tool that should be used only as a last resort. Anyway, they bore people.

Nathan’s fingers dug deeper into me.

‘Do you think you could let go my arm, or at least not hold it so tightly?’ I asked.

He released me at once. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Rosie, so I’ll say it straight.’

But he did not. The words drizzled into silence, and he swung back to his contemplation of the garden in which he took no interest. At last, he drew an audible breath and said, ‘I’ve found someone else.’

The shock hit me like a hammer. ‘What?’ I groped for the sanctuary of the blue armchair. ‘What did you say?’

‘I’ve found someone else, and I’ve fallen in love with her.’ Nathan turned to face me. ‘I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry.’

I said the first stupid thing that came into my mind. ‘You can’t have done. I would have known.’ He shrugged. I tried again. ‘I don’t believe you.’

He shook his head as if to say, ‘Don’t. Don’t make it worse.’

I struggled to concentrate. Affairs happened to other people, not to Nathan and me, a happily married couple. I plucked at a thread trailing from the arm of the chair. I always insisted on sitting in the sun by the window and the original bright Delft blue of the chair cover had faded over the years to the softest powder.

‘Listen to me.’ Nathan sat down opposite me and hunched over his knees. ‘I have found someone else, and we need to talk about it.’

I looked down at my hands. I have been told they’re nice, with long fingers, and that the simplicity of a heavy gold wedding ring sets them off to advantage. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Look at me, Rosie.’

I did so, but I was concentrating on my chest where my heart was banging in an unfamiliar fashion. ‘I don’t understand,’ I whispered. He gave me a long, pitying look, and the blood drained from my cheeks. ‘You seemed perfectly happy, Nathan.’

His silence told me another story, the real story. He had been happy because of someone else. I returned to the observation of my hands, which suddenly seemed thin, worn and breakable, the tiny lump on the ring-finger joint more noticeable. I made an effort to pull myself together. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

Nathan climbed wearily to his feet. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘No, it isn’t. Should I be cracking open the champagne or something?’

‘Rosie…’

The sensation in my chest crescendoed, and I felt sick. I leapt up and fumbled my way to the bathroom where I hung over the basin and stared at the taps. Nathan was never unkind. Careless and preoccupied sometimes, yes. A man who craved much from his work, and went to pains to obtain it, yes. Determined. Predictable. That was what I loved about him, and needed from him. But he was never cruel.

Little by little, I was forced to face the conclusion: if those judgements were correct, Nathan must mean what he said.

After a few minutes I felt steadier. I drank some water from the toothmug, which tasted of mint, wiped my face, and braced myself to confront Nathan, who was hovering in the doorway.

‘Are you all right?’

‘What do you think?’ His question was crass, and made me angry, which was the easiest to deal with of the many feelings that surged through me. Disbelief, hotly pursued by terror, then, stalking through dark, unmapped thickets, rank humiliation.

Nathan placed a hand on my shoulder, and inspected my face. He gave a faint, guilty smile. ‘I thought for a moment you might do something stupid. But you mustn’t, you know, not over me.’

‘I thought that was the point, Nathan. If you love someone you’re prepared to do something stupid.’

‘We have to talk. Properly’ He took my hand and led me along the landing and down the stairs. I tried to snatch it away but he held on tight. I was dragged behind him, my feet slipping on the treads. ‘You’re telling me that you’re having an affair and you want me to go over the fine print with you? Would you like advice on what underwear to buy her?’

‘Shut up, Rosie.’

We blundered back into the sitting room where Nathan tore off his suit jacket and flung it down. He grasped the back of the sofa, took a breath – the speech pose. We should discuss the paper’s circulation. Nathan often practised on me when he required advice and input. Don’t patronize. Be clear.

I said, desperately, ‘Nathan, we could forget this conversation. We need not go on.’

He was taken aback and muttered, ‘I prayed it wouldn’t come to this.’

‘Obviously not hard enough.’ I heard a sharp voice, and it was mine, and I hated it.

‘The stupid thing is, I need help and I can’t ask you.’

I sat down in the blue chair and plucked at the stray thread. Blue was the colour of life: the lapis used by the master painters I had seen in Rome, the cerulean of hot skies, the metallic gleam of a duck’s wing, a vein twitching under skin. ‘No, you can’t ask me for help.’

That had been a rule in our marriage. We never talked about it, but we understood: if one was in trouble, the other came to help. He helped me. I helped him. We helped each other.

Again there was a silence. Eventually Nathan cleared his throat. ‘You have every right to be angry’

Angry? Bitterly so, that Nathan had been so stupid to tell me. Married people did fall in love with others, and out again. The trick was to be very clever and very secret about such a predicament, and I would have expected Nathan to be very clever and very secret and to have starved his love until it died from lack of nourishment. ‘Why have you told me? It w-wasn’t necessary’

‘Rosie, you haven’t understood.’

‘No, I haven’t.’ But then I did. I forced myself to raise my eyes. ‘You want to leave home? You want to leave me? You can’t. There are the children to consider.’

‘The children are twenty-two and twenty-four. They can handle it. Lots do.’

‘It doesn’t matter what age they are.’

He shrugged with unfamiliar emphasis, and I noticed a feather of grey hair above his ears. Nathan would have noticed it, too, for he kept a rigorous tally on the signs of decay.

‘But why do you want to leave? Surely we can get over this… episode. I wish – I wish you hadn’t told me but I’m not blind, I know these things happen. Things happen under the surface all the time, every day. Nathan, trust me. We can get over it.’

It was true. I was not stupid. Love had many forms, and assumed different shapes at different times, sometimes glorious, sometimes terrible, always necessary. It was a question of believing in it, and fighting for it, and the necessary bit sometimes meant sacrifice, precisely because everything could change. Just like that. With a couple of sentences. Yes, Nathan and I could find a box, pile in any lies or deceit, shut the lid and go on. The act of will was the crucial thing, the factor that pulls the messy tendrils and mistakes back into order.

He paced up to the french windows and back again. ‘For some time now I have been thinking about milestones and of how we’re getting older.’

‘Nathan, you’re only fifty-one. Anyway, it isn’t the point.’

But it was the point.

He stopped in his tracks. ‘It is and it isn’t. I need freedom, space. We build cages for ourselves, Rosie, in all sorts of ways. Work, family, habit. I’ve realized that I feel imprisoned by the walls I’ve built around myself.’

In all our marriage, I had never heard such words leave Nathan’s lips. It was a new language for us both and I didn’t think he spoke it fluently or even well. I groped at my unruly chest. ‘Imprisoned? But you wanted to be. You spent… energy, time doing it. You wanted a family and the career. You’ve had them, and enjoyed them, and you can’t just discard a family because you feel a bit bored.’

‘You don’t want to live with someone who feels like I do, do you?’

‘Isn’t that for me to decide?’

‘I’d better be completely honest with you, Rosie.’ I quivered at the thought of Nathan’s complete honesty. ‘The other I could have dealt with but this person… She gives me… what I think I must be looking for. She admits new possibilities.’

‘Or do you mean sex?’ I flashed.

We glared at each other and I was sorry I had allowed myself to say something so obvious, so revealing. Then again, it was obvious.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Nathan, but the gleam in his eye told me otherwise. I thought of the other night, when it had been so easy, so affectionate, and I felt black outrage. Back went Nathan’s hands into his pockets. ‘When we married, we agreed that we would always give each other space. I’ve been a good husband, yes?’

‘Yes, you have.’ I spoke as calmly as I could.

‘I’ve done everything you could ask?’ I nodded. ‘Well, I’m asking now for my space.’

I wondered what could possibly help me. A drink? A blow to the head? ‘How long has this… Nathan? Who?’

‘About a year.’

‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘So long. We’ve been living a lie so long.’ So long that it took in last Christmas. (‘Nathan, what do you think – Christmas lunch or Christmas dinner?’) The autumn holiday in Scotland where rain fell as soft as bottled water and we found wild bilberries on the hill. Nathan’s birthday party in August (forty people came and toasted him), and the familiar cycle of Monday and Friday, the suppers we had shared, the bottles of wine, the intimacies… They had all been different from what I had supposed them to be.

Nathan looked sick and stricken. ‘Not a lie, Rosie, because it didn’t start out serious.’

‘Nathan, have you had affairs before?’

‘No. Never.’ He took my hand. ‘I promise.’ He dropped it.

In a way, that made it worse. ‘Nathan, have you been pushed into this by whoever it is? You really, really mean what you say?’

‘I must have change. I must have some air. I can’t stay where I am any longer.’

I dropped my head into my hands. ‘For God’s sake, Nathan, don’t. Spare me. Please don’t dress an affair into some great plea for freedom. I can’t bear it.’

‘If that’s the way you want it.’

‘But who is it?’

Nathan took his hands out of his pockets and smoothed down his hair. The transition from the successful newspaper executive into a troubled, middle-aged man shocked me. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this…’

Head bowed, like a victim, I waited. ‘Who, Nathan?’

He swallowed. ‘It’s Minty.’

After Nathan had shovelled a few things into a bag and departed, I walked through the house. I did not know what else to do. I went up the stairs and along the landing. Outside the main bedroom, our bedroom, I came to a halt for I could not bring myself to enter it.

It’s Minty.

No, I choked, backing away from Nathan. It’s not possible. Minty would not do that.

But she had.

I grasped at the banister for support. Did hearts stop beating with grief and shock? Mine was thrashing around like a wild thing, and I was shivering uncontrollably.

Down the stairs I went, clumsy and frantic, into the sitting room and, with hands that felt as if they did not belong to me, I emptied my book bag on to the floor: papers, a novel, a cookery manual, a biography of Gladstone.

Why had I done that?

I abandoned them there, a frozen torrent on the floor, and went to inspect the invitations propped up on the mantelpiece. Only a day ago, I had scrawled an A on both and entered the dates in the family diary. I turned them face down – how silly, how convenient, I had not wished to go to either. As I did so, my wedding ring caught my eye. I stared at it, heavy on my finger with the weight of the years. It did not belong there any more. It did not belong there. It scraped at my flesh as I tugged it over my knuckle – ripped at the weight of those years – and dropped it beside the invitations.

The catch at the french windows was stiff and always stuck. I had to pull hard before the doors opened. Cold evening air streamed into the sitting room. I sat down in the blue chair and shivered.

Eventually, when the interminable evening had worn away, I went up to the spare room, to the toile de Jouy curtains and the white roses, and lay face down on the bed, my arms stretched out in my personal Calvary

Some time during the night I woke, frightened by the unfamiliarity of the bed and unsure where I was. I was still lying face down and the pillow under my face was wet.

I remembered. I got up, went to my own room and climbed between the sheets, inhaling a faint smell of Nathan. It was dark, but no darker than the darkness in my mind.

How had I not seen?

How had I not sensed?

You have been a fool, Rose.

I had married Nathan because he understood. He, too, had wanted to step inside the house and shut the door against the world. Within the closed intimacy, the unity of us two, we had loved each other with gentleness, tenderness and gratitude, and we had told each other that we might try to build a Garden of Eden together.

I suppose we both forgot that everything is finite and everything decays.

Last June Minty had come to Lakey Street for supper, just spaghetti and a glass of wine, over which we had planned to discuss various projects. You don’t mind? I asked Nathan. She won’t stay late. As long as she doesn’t, he replied. I’m tired.

Because I was behind with the food, I spent quite a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking the tomatoes into pulp then sieving them.

‘Oh, Nathan,’ I heard Minty exclaim, and then her breathy laugh. They were sitting in the garden, making inroads into a bottle of wine. I fried an onion until it was beautifully transparent, added a little grated carrot and stirred it into the ragú. Leaf by leaf, I washed a lettuce, dried it and set a pan to boil for the pasta. Let them talk, I thought to myself. It will do Nathan good.

I was hot and tired, but the kitchen was untidy and I took time to wash and dry the used utensils, then put them away. It was nine o’clock before I carried the supper into the garden and the wine bottle was empty.

Nathan was talking and gesticulating, and Minty was watching him through slanting dark eyes. I set down the tray. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Loyalty,’ said Minty. ‘We were discussing how you are loyal to people you have known for a long time.’

‘How do you mean?’

Nathan got up, opened another bottle and poured more wine. ‘Whether you lose sight of the original reasons for your loyalty and end up being loyal simply because you have known someone a long time.’ His hand poised over my glass. ‘Don’t you agree, Rosie?’ He was smiling but I sensed that he was angry too.

Puzzled, I looked up at him. ‘I suppose I do.’

‘I think you do.’

Holding her glass to her chest, Minty sat back in her chair. ‘I’ve no idea. I expect I’ll find out…’ A wing of shiny hair fell across her face and she brushed it back. ‘When I’m older, I suppose.’

Later in the conversation when we were discussing holidays, Nathan astonished me by saying, ‘Rose has this secret lust for adventure, although she hides it because I prefer to keep going back to the same place. She travelled a bit before she met me.’

‘Nathan’s teasing, Minty,’ I interjected lightly. ‘He’s also quite wrong. I gave all that up when I married him. It was no sacrifice. Being on the move isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.’

Minty’s dark eyes, resting on Nathan, were shiny with sympathy. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Rose told me she used to go travelling with Hal Thorne.’

I cried out into the silence of the bedroom. Once. Twice. Cries of pain and disbelief.

A long time later, the darkness in my mind merged with the darkness in the room and I must have slept.