The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

6

On the way to work, I met Martin Hurley. It was Monday, January, very cold, and I was still recovering from Christmas. Unusually for Martin, he was mooching along, weighed down by his briefcase. We stopped to chat outside Mrs Austen’s front garden where frost smeared the jumble of flowerpots and yoghurt cartons that, typically, lurked on the windowsill. Mrs Austen was a fanatical gardener, but as she lived in the first-floor flat of the multi-occupied house, she had no proper space to indulge her passion. It was lack in a life such as Mrs Austen’s that turned a man or a woman sharp-tongued, nosy and tart as a lemon, and on cue, she appeared at the window.

‘Not your usual style, is it?’ I said. I normally saw Martin stepping into a chauffeur-driven car.

‘Broken down.’ He made a mischievous face. Actually, I feel as if I’ve been let off school. Big meeting today and I wouldn’t mind escaping. I keep thinking I could go AWOL travelling the District Line.’

I smiled. We both knew that Martin wouldn’t miss the meeting for the world. His meetings, as with so many people who worked, ratified his professional existence. ‘I doubt if you’d think Ealing or Hainault a destination resort, and after two seconds on the Tube, you’ll be begging for a fleet of cars. Trust me.’

‘I do trust you,’ he said, which was nice, and also unexpected. It would have been wrong to dismiss Martin as a one-dimensional man, focused only on meetings. He was discriminating, and generous with many things. Even money. Also, he was nice about his wife, which not every husband was. From time to time, when Nathan and I were chez Hurley, I caught Martin observing Paige carefully. It was a version of paying attention to the fine detail, which had made him such a success at work.

Snooping from the window was not yielding enough rewards and Mrs Austen emerged on to the front step to edge closer to this interesting street theatre. I waved at her. ‘Paige OK?’ I asked Martin.

‘So-so. Pregnancy is an exclusive business. Unlike conception.’

Are you looking forward to number three?’

Martin didn’t reply immediately, and when he did he sounded a little troubled. ‘It’s very crowded – life, I mean.’

That worried me a little. ‘Too cryptic for this time of the morning, Martin.’

‘I feel cryptic, Minty. Never mind. Now for the meeting.’ He dropped a kiss on my cheek. ‘See you.’ He raised his briefcase in salute to the watchful Mrs Austen, and we went our separate ways.

Sandwiched between bodies on a packed train, I began to wonder in earnest about Paige and Martin. ‘I’m practically the only mother in the world prepared to put her children first,’ Paige had maintained, and she wasn’t entirely joking. ‘It’s lonely. If we go on like this, there’ll be no population in the West. Look at Italy. Look at Germany. Child-free countries.’ Paige’s zeal was both heartbreaking and infuriating: a missionary among the heathens. Yet there was something reassuring about her straightforward outlook, which did not involve any of the ifs and buts that draw the sting of rules and regulations.

Barry sauntered into my office, but his greeting was sharp. ‘What kept you?’

I cursed inwardly and flushed: I was twenty minutes late. ‘Sorry, Barry. The Tube.’

He glanced at his Rolex. ‘You can make it up later.’

He threw himself into a chair. ‘I’ve got a tricky day. We need the green light for the Aids film, so say your prayers.’ He was dressed in a dark Armani suit and red tie, which meant Big Meeting and probably explained the sharpness. He smelt of aftershave, and a hint of claret from the night before.

Again he checked his watch. ‘Five minutes before the off, and I’m going to waste them with you.’

What’s up with Gabrielle? hovered on the tip of my tongue, but I resisted. On closer inspection, Barry’s collar points were not quite adjusted. Then I understand that he did not, at this moment, require the diversion of a superb body and a sexy giggle. What Barry needed was an adult, sensible, grounding conversation before he went into a Big Meeting. As we talked, I was unsure whether to cry because I no longer occupied the pretty-and-diverting category, or laugh because I had been elevated to ‘serious’.

Barry departed, and I was left to beat the working day into shape. I went through my in-tray and sorted it into ‘urgent’ and ‘pending’. Rose had taught me the tricks and procedures of an office, and the lessons remained with me. Funny, that: she had handed me professionalism and her husband on a plate. I wrote a report, made phone calls. I read scripts until my eyes blurred.

Eventually I pulled the file marked ‘Middle Age’ towards me. I had been avoiding it. Definitely. I opened my notebook and wrote: (1) What is the story? (2) Why are we proposing it? (3) Who will make it? (4) Likely costs?

What was there to say? Wasn’t middle age a furtive, secretive stage? When I’d bought my first bra, there was no one I didn’t buttonhole with the news. Ask the spirit of my dead, unsympathetic mother. But I’d rather die than reveal the existence of a varicose vein in my leg. (Thank you, twins.) I had no desire to discuss my body’s slippage. The first blows of age. It was akin to tourists tramping round a ruin. And which of us would volunteer to examine the mistakes, guilt, regret or banalities of working, nurturing and fretting? Who wished to acknowledge the loneliness of growing older?

‘When middle age creeps up on a woman, she discovers that younger women are just as much wolves as men,’ a newspaper pundit stated in one of the cuttings that Deb had handed over. On that point, I conceded, I was the expert.

I remembered playing the wolf…

Nathan had tracked me down in Bonne Tartine. He must have followed me from the Vistemax offices. He slid into the opposite seat, then nodded at my coffee and the plate on which sat a tiny, untouched croissant. He seemed inordinately pleased with himself, his expression absurdly young and his hair ruffled. ‘Is that just there for temptation?’

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘I watched and waited.’

I swallowed the uneven lump of excitement and apprehension: now that I had got to this point, questions needed to be asked. ‘What about Rose?’

Carefully, Nathan cut the croissant into pieces. ‘Rose is busy with her own life.’ He paused. ‘All things considered, I don’t think she’d mind. I’ve never been her first concern…’ He leant forward and began to feed me the croissant. Its sweet, crumbling texture dissolved in my mouth, and I thought, Rose must be mad or stupid to be so blind.

‘Why did you do it?’ asked the forty-two-year-old Rose, after I had taken Nathan. ‘We were friends.’

Yes, we had been friends. Sweet, sweet friends…

‘You look stuck in.’ Deb sashayed into my office. ‘Anything I should know about?’ Uninvited, she perched on the edge of my desk, and I suppressed the desire to push her off.

‘OK.’ I sat back. ‘Do women feel middle age more acutely than men?’

‘God, I don’t know’ Deb gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘Isn’t it all over for the middle-aged, whichever sex?’ Her eyes drifted past me towards Reception in case anyone useful was waiting.

‘I think my husband feels it.’

Deb transferred her attention back to me. ‘Barry says you’re a second wife. Is he a lot older? Is he nice?’

‘He’s very nice,’ I said flatly. ‘That’s why I married him.’

‘How much older?’

‘Twenty years.’

The corners of Deb’s mouth went down, registering distaste. ‘How… very brave,’ she said, after a few awkward seconds. Then she said. ‘I wish…’

‘You wish?’ She might have been wishing for a new body or a new life. Or maybe she was just wishing she could fall in love, in which case I might warn her off it. Apart from anything else, love is ageing. You fetch up with twins, varicose veins and being hated by a clan.

‘Did I tell you I’m going mad in my flat? It’s above a curry restaurant and it reeks – I reek – of curry. The landlord won’t do anything about the ventilation and is threatening to put up the rent.’ She spread her hands. ‘I long to live in a clean white palace high above the trees. I long to be different. But at the moment the future doesn’t look bright.’ She paused. ‘Did you know that Barry’s taking on another producer?… You didn’t? He’s brilliant apparently’

Annoyance with Barry clocked in. No doubt he’d had his reasons for not mentioning it when I talked to him earlier, which showed that one should never forget the boss always has a hidden agenda. I closed my notebook with a snap. Perhaps things were not going to work out with Paradox. I experienced mild regret at the thought, but there were other production companies and I would allow Nathan an I-told-you-so conversation.

Deb stood up and stretched. The junction between her cargos and T-shirt revealed gooseflesh. I nearly said, I so nearly said, ‘ You’ll catch cold if you’re not careful.’

I returned home in good time to take over from Eve, who was going out. ‘Thanks, Minty.’ A rare, pale smile stretched her lips. ‘This is big night.’

Best not to ask. From the window of the boys’ bedroom, I watched her clatter down the street in a cheap pair of high heels. She looked released, happy, her hair loosened from its customary prison wardress’s clamp, and I reminded myself I must never forget that Eve was entitled to an off-duty life.

‘You are a busy mummy.’ Lucas’s fair hair, which was beginning to darken, was tumbled and mussed, and he was the image of his father.

The Thomas the Tank Engine clock clicked on the chest-of-drawers. Two pairs of socks, two T-shirts and two pairs of underpants dripped off a chair that was stencilled with dragons. Under their duvets, I could see that the boys had a long way to grow before they reached the end of the bed. It would take years and years, in fact.

‘Never too busy for you two.’ I tried to remember which bed I had sat on the previous evening and chose the opposite. Felix smiled shyly, his gaze flicking to a point above the bed where he had stuck a drawing on the wall. I was about to expostulate, Felix, the wallpaper, when it dawned on me that Felix’s drawing was of a large cat with black and white stripes. Underneath it he had written ‘My Lost Cat’ in blue crayon.

When they were asleep – Felix curled up on his right side, Lucas spreadeagled over the bed – I turned on the nightlight and left them to dream.

Then I found myself slipping upstairs to the spare room where the white roses in the painting appeared to leap out of their dark background. I searched through Nathan’s shirts for his notebook.

On 21 January, three days ago, he had written, ‘Is it better not to care?’ and yesterday, ‘I feel that I don’t really exist. I look in the mirror and I am not sure who I am looking at.’

I closed the notebook, and only then saw the yellow Post-it note stuck to the front. ‘Private,’ it said, in Nathan’s handwriting.

That made me smile. If the notebook was private, why did he not hide it more securely? Answer: he wished me to read it. It was a challenge and I took it up. I went downstairs, found a pen and wrote underneath: ‘Talk to me, Nathan?’

The candles I had placed on the table guttered. Nathan ate the organic fillet steak slowly. ‘Not bad.’

Not bad? Every mouthful had cost a fortune. I swallowed the final piece as if it was gold dust and said, ‘One day I’ll learn to cook.’

Nathan uttered a snort midway between laughter and derision. ‘It’s not you, Minty’

Upstairs, there was an eruption. Despite the direst warnings, the twins were swapping beds, as they did most nights. Nathan cocked an ear. ‘It’s fine,’ I reassured him. ‘Tell me what’s happening at Vistemax. I talked to Gisela yesterday and she said Roger’s ultra-preoccupied. I thought you’d had a good year?’

Nathan pushed away his plate. ‘A big libel suit,’ he confessed. ‘It was an article in Weekend Digest about bungs for football managers. It’s likely to cost Vistemax, and it happened on my watch.’

‘But not your fault.’

‘Not directly. My responsibility, though.’

‘You should have told me.’ The kitchen was quiet. ‘Journalists,’ I murmured. Since leaving Vistemax, I had lost track of what went on in the company. Nathan, however, swam with ease though the numbers and strategy. ‘You should have said something,’ I repeated.

Nathan shrugged.

The silence had become that of two people who were not communicating on the same level. On this point Successful Relationships was firm and clear: it was a situation that should be sorted.

‘I’ve bought you these,’ I heard myself say, and handed him the bottle of multi-vitamins I had picked up in my lunch hour.

He tossed the bottle from one hand to the other. ‘Thank you, Mother Minty.’

He changed into an old shirt in a washed-out blue that he had had since the dawn of time and refused to throw away. In the candlelight, the colour deepened. My skirt, a deep black, now gleamed bluish. One of the candles flickered and went out. Nathan leant forward, nipped the wick between his fingers and said, with regret, ‘Minty, you shouldn’t be spending your life watching me.’

‘It has been a bad day.’

He blew on smoked fingers. ‘Yes, it has.’

‘Nathan…’ The words trembled on my tongue. What is your ‘secret grief’? But I already knew the answer. Nathan’s secret grief was Rose and the past… and so was mine.

‘Take one of those vitamins.’ I reached for the bottle and unscrewed the lid. ‘I’ll take one too.’ I held a pill between my thumb and finger. ‘Be a good boy’

Nathan observed it for a second or two. ‘Later,’ he said.

I should have pressed on: Let’s discuss your diary. Let us, together, sort out what is making you unhappy. But the expression that had settled on his face meant that my words aborted. It was not so much impatience and distaste, although those were mirrored in his face – and I was unsure whether they were directed at himself or at me – it was his obvious, disturbing, detachment. Nathan had removed himself from the kitchen, and I had no idea where to.

I tried again: ‘Nathan, I know I shouldn’t have read what you wrote, but we must talk about it.’

‘What?’ With effort, Nathan refocused on me. ‘Actually…’ He stopped.

‘Nathan, I want to talk to you about… the diary. About what I read.’

‘No,’ Nathan cut me off. ‘I don’t want to discuss it. It’s silly, and very private.’

‘But…’ The obvious question was, why did you leave it for me to read? However, I had learnt that most things in our relationship were not straightforward and I had to pick my way through the maze.

‘I said I didn’t want to discuss it.’

‘If you feel like that.’ Suddenly I had lost interest in exploring my husband’s psyche. I shoved back my chair and got to my feet. If I’d had three magic wishes all three would have gone on summoning back the old Nathan. I could never have the young one, but I would dearly have liked to reclaim the version who had swash-buckled into my life and said, ‘Let’s escape.’

‘Nathan, can you pass me that saucepan?’ I busied myself running hot water and swishing in washing-up liquid.

‘Sure.’ If he was surprised at my change of mood, he was not going to remark on it. ‘But there is something…’

The sound of the doorbell shot through the house. Nathan started. ‘This is what I should have mentioned.’

I stiffened, but said coolly enough, ‘You’d better go and answer the door, then. Hope it hasn’t woken the boys.’

‘But…’ Nathan was alight with an excitement and dread I couldn’t place. Then he shrugged. ‘OK.’

He went into the hall, and I heard voices, then the front door closing.

Nathan led the visitor into the sitting room and I wiped my hands, tucked my hair behind my ears and went to see who it was. Nathan whipped round as I walked in, a curious smile hovering at the corners of his mouth. ‘Look who’s here.’

But a sixth sense had already told me.

Rose.

This was the encounter that provided material for any late-night demons, any restless dreams, for the chill of a dawn catechism when I asked myself what I had done in taking Nathan. My first impulse was to laugh: it was ridiculous that Rose should be standing there. Then my knees drained of strength.

‘Rose.’ I held the back of a chair for support.

‘Hello, Minty’ She held out a hand. ‘You’re looking well.’

She was dressed simply but expensively in jeans and a tweed jacket nipped in at the waist – slimmer than she appeared on television. She was tanned and her hair was glorious: long, highlighted and silky. She was barely recognizable as the woman I had known in the office, wearing a grey skirt and black jumper that bagged in all the wrong places. ‘Literature, Minty,’ I pictured her saying, as she did in those days, ‘is full of stories about tension between servant and master.’ Her hair would have been bundled up any-old-how, and her lipstick was always too pink. There’s a short story about a pair of sisters who were so in awe of Cook that they never dared go into their own kitchen. They spent most of their lives fearful and thirsty’

Then, Rose had hovered between wryness and laughter. This Rose did too. There was no hint of bitterness, only a polite interest as she took in the changes to the sitting room.

Terrific, I thought. We end up where we began. Where once I had observed this room through Rose’s eyes – painted a pale dove grey, the sofa and chairs arranged close to the window – Rose was observing it through mine: a cream-yellow paint wash, the sofa and chairs pulled closer to the fireplace. She was probably concluding, as I had done: That woman does not understand this room.

‘What are you doing here, Rose?’

Her gaze swung between me and Nathan. ‘Didn’t Nathan tell you?’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘Nathan, you didn’t tell Minty. That’s bad of you. I wanted to talk to Nathan and he suggested that I drop in since I was going to be in the area. We’d have had to meet sooner or later though, wouldn’t we, Minty? Is it OK?’

‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not prepared.’

Rose could have said, ‘Nothing prepared me for you to take Nathan.’ She considered. ‘I don’t think either of us has anything to be afraid of. Not any more.’

I missed her – I mean, I missed the kind, soft Rose, the wife to Nathan who had brimmed with the desire to help and who said things like ‘Tell me what’s wrong, Minty’, or ‘You’re not to worry’ Unsurprisingly, that Rose had vanished from my life.

She shifted a bag, with fashionable buckles and straps, from one shoulder to the other. Her love of handbags hadn’t changed. The smile she directed at Nathan was friendly and well disposed, and I swear he winced. ‘Nathan, about Sam…’

I raised an eyebrow at Nathan, who looked utterly helpless. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Sam has a problem and Rose wanted to discuss it.’

‘Ah,’ I said. I didn’t add, Why didn’t you tell me?

‘Dad!’ There was a cry from the top of the stairs.

Nathan went out of the room and hissed, ‘Get back into bed, Lukey. Now.’

‘I’m really sorry, Minty,’ Rose said. ‘I wouldn’t have come if I’d known Nathan hadn’t cleared it with you. I should have realized he’d duck it.’ I gave a little laugh, and she added, ‘I remember your laugh. It’s distinctive and I could always tell where you were.’

For some reason, that made me both angry and sad. ‘Do you still see Hal?’ I asked. ‘How is he?’

Her eyes narrowed, but she answered politely: ‘We still see each other, of course. Quite a lot. It’s great… A great friendship. I’m lucky in that.’

‘I’ve always wondered.’

Nathan returned and pressed on Rose a drink, coffee, whatever she would like. ‘Some wine,’ she conceded.

‘I’ll check on the twins,’ I said. ‘You’d better get on with your conversation. Don’t mind me.’

Nathan sent me a look that meant, Please don’t be like that. I sent him one back: Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.

‘The twins? How are they? I hear a lot about them.’ Rose could only summon a polite interest in two children she’d never seen. ‘I gather Frieda – Sam’s Frieda – gets on well with them.’

‘I know who Frieda is, Rose.’

‘Minty…’ Nathan intervened, with a note of warning.

Rose merely replied, ‘How stupid of me. Of course you do.’ She turned back to Nathan. ‘As for our son…’

‘Our’. It dropped from Rose’s mouth with all her rights to its usage.

I fled the room and ran upstairs. Lucas had settled and both boys were sleeping calmly enough – in the wrong beds. Felix was hunched under his duvet. Lucas had thrown his off, and I tucked it over him, adjusted the night-light and found myself by the ironing-board on the landing.

Downstairs the voices murmured. I heard Nathan laugh and say ‘No…’ in the way he did when he was particularly amused. The construction and timbre of that word seemed expressly designed to exclude me.

I snatched up one of his ironed shirts and began to fold it this way and that. In the perfect syllogism, the logic flows without a hitch from proposition A to proposition B, which results in the only possible conclusion. For example: husband leaves first wife because he is unhappy; he marries second wife who he ‘knows’ will make him happy; she believes him; they are happy.

Perfect syllogism. Imperfect world.

I was clutching Nathan’s shirt so tightly that my hands hurt. I dropped it on the floor, stepped over it and crept downstairs, like the thief I was.

Light spilled into the hall from the sitting room. The door was half closed, but sufficiently open to allow me to watch the scene inside.