The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

7

Nathan and Rose were ensconced on the sofa. Rose was toying with her glass, fingers curling and uncurling round its stem. The big gold ring she wore on her right hand caught my eye, so bright it hurt. Nathan was leaning back against the cushions, one hand spread along the top of the sofa. It was a pose suggesting relaxation and ease. Every so often, his gaze settled on his first wife like that of a starving dog on a bone.

‘They never last,’ Rose was saying, all indulgence and affection, which meant she could only be talking about her daughter. ‘How many times, Nathan, have we seen that?’ Nathan hung on her every syllable. ‘All the same, I’m a little worried about Poppy. I detect a certain, well… restlessness. I asked if she and Richard were getting on all right, and she said she’d never been happier. But you know how it is, Nathan – you can sense that something’s not quite right.’

Nathan lifted the hand that lay on the back of the sofa in agreement. ‘Can’t be money, surely.’

Rose said affectionately, ‘No, Nathan. It’s not money. At least, I don’t think so. It can’t be. Richard earns such a lot.’

‘Someone has to think about money.’ He smiled at her, complicit and gentle in a way he never was with me.

I could have enlightened them as to what Poppy hadn’t told her mother. Almost certainly it was to do with the on-line poker. I could have said to them, ‘Do you realize that Poppy’s probably gambling and losing? And the more she loses, the more she’ll play. It’s the nature of the beast.’ They could have seized the chance to act in concert, and asked, ‘How much and how deep?’ They could have gone in tandem to have it out with Poppy. You can tell us. We’re your parents. We love you. But, yes, I held my silence. I didn’t hold any brief for Poppy, but what was her business was her business.

Nathan put his elbows on his knees and leant forward. It was a pose he adopted frequently, which emulated Rodin’s The Thinker. ‘ About Sam, is Jilly happy for him to take the job?’

Rose tucked a leg under her. ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss. Jilly’s furious at the idea of leaving Winchcombe. Apparently she’s threatening to stay behind. She says she hates America, Texas in particular.’

‘She’s never been to Texas, and she won’t stay behind. She’s not that kind of woman. She knows it’s a big step up for Sam, and that it’s important.’

Rose clicked her tongue against her teeth, but it was not an impatient or angry sound. It was a marker that formed part of the discussion. It meant she was considering what she would say next and my husband, my foolish husband, waited, a smile on his lips, doting to the point of being offensive. ‘Difficult, Nathan. Jilly’s very settled in the village. Parish council, book club, and the school is perfect.’ Rose turned to Nathan and her hair tumbled over her shoulders. Nathan… Nathan reached over and tucked a tendril behind her ear.

‘It’s uncanny,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Frieda looks more like you each day.’

Rose ignored the gesture, but she was pleased. ‘Do you think? She’s very special. Has she told you about the pink bike? Last time I went down, she and I conducted a ballet class. We leapt off armchairs and pointed our toes.’ She drank some wine.

‘Savour the merlot,’ he said, in a Russian accent, which made Rose laugh.

‘Don’t remind me of him,’ she said, and I had no idea who she meant. She tapped the glass. ‘This is nice, though. Did you buy it at the usual place?’

I had an impression that I was gazing into one of those fairground mirrors, which, by their curvature, invert what they reflect. In theory, it should have been me sitting on the sofa, all cosy and intimate, Nathan’s hand resting behind my shoulder, and Rose should have been peering through the door like a prize snooper.

I must have moved for they swung round. Immediately Nathan looked tense and reared back against the sofa, but Rose stayed where she was. I advanced into the room. ‘Since you ask, darling, the twins are fine.’ I sat down in the chair opposite them. ‘Have you sorted out whatever it was?’

Rose got to her feet and smoothed her jacket. ‘Yes and no. I’m sure Nathan will tell you about it.’

The ‘tell you about it’ was irritating but, under the circumstances, I had to let it pass. ‘I enjoyed the television programme, Rose. It was very good.’

‘Yes,’ she replied simply. ‘It was, wasn’t it? Wé had a lot of fun making it. It came about by serendipity. I was mulling over the idea and Hal introduced me to a producer. It took a lot of haggling, and I had to persuade them I was the right person to front it, but we got there.’ She made a rueful moue, which invited me to enter into a solidarity with her. ‘Camera adds ten pounds, though. Not that one should mind.’

I was trying not to stare at her too obviously. But I couldn’t avoid the conclusion that the woman standing before me was the model I had taken a lot of trouble to copy. Rose had worked through the messy bits of her life, and there she was, furnished and burnished with an electricity I was supposed to possess. Yet here I was, weighed down by minutiae, my lists, my children… and my husband. Then it occurred to me that hundreds of thousands of second wives had been faced with encounters such as this one, only to realize that what they had suspected was true: they had volunteered for the predicament of the younger sibling, who would never, ever catch up with the dazzling elder.

‘There might be a follow-up series,’ she was saying. ‘I had no idea… until…’ There was a frozen little silence. ‘Until I… I mean I’ve only just discovered how vast, diverse and wonderful the world is.’

Nathan pulled himself to his feet and moved a fraction closer to Rose. ‘Don’t feel you have to go.’

Rose knew Nathan. I knew Nathan. We both knew he was making a bad job of concealing that he ached with regret. If I had truly loved Nathan… if I had… this imperfect, humiliating pretence would have cut my heart in two.

‘Let us know,’ I said. We’ll make a point of watching.’

Rose picked up the fashionable handbag and searched inside it. ‘Did I leave the keys in my coat? I shouldn’t do that – they’re always falling out. No, here they are.’ She managed to convey a sense of charming disorder that, nevertheless, would not inconvenience anyone.

Nathan was completely taken and gazed, spellbound, down at her. ‘I’ll ring Sam tomorrow,’ he touched her arm, ‘and find out if he’s serious about this Texan job.’

‘I’m going to Italy tomorrow. Last minute, spur of the moment. Long weekend. Then I have a couple of pieces to write, which will take lots of research but they should be fun.’

There was so much more about Rose that she could have told us. She had walked into number seven with a new history about which Nathan and I were largely ignorant. She could have told us about her intriguing new life. I live here. I work there. I had dinner with so-and-so. If I had been prepared, I could have dealt with it. I would even have wanted to hear it because I would have been able to make realistic comparisons, instead of the reverse.

She placed her hands on Nathan’s shoulders and kissed his cheek lightly. ‘I’ll give you a ring next week. And, Nathan, about that other idea…’ the light caught the gloss on her hair and the sheen of her jacket ‘… let’s talk about that too.’

Nathan’s hands clenched. ‘Yup.’ He stuffed his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. Suddenly I glimpsed the younger Nathan – the one who had swept the young Rose up from her disaster with Hal Thorne, married her, given her children and a domain she had guarded until I came along.

The light in the sitting room was flattering – which it should have been for I had gone to a lot of trouble to make it so. Rose seemed so fresh, so mysterious in her intentions and busyness – but mysterious with what? I struggled to understand precisely what I was up against.

The answer seemed to be that Rose had become powerful because it was impossible any longer to pin her down.

Nathan led Rose into the hall: there had been a further conversation lasting five minutes or so, and I heard him say, ‘Tell Frieda I’ll be looking out for her pointy toes when I come down.’

The front door closed, and he came into the kitchen to face the inevitable scene.

I had taken refuge in checking the store-cupboard in readiness for Eve’s weekly shopping trip. It was lucky I had: it was practically bare.

He was braced for a major explosion and knocked his clenched fist on the table. Deliberately, I kept my back to him. ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean to make me feel uncomfortable or humiliate me, Nathan.’ I kept my anger in check and turned round. ‘Why would you wish to do that?’

He was shocked, and took a step towards me. ‘Of course I didn’t want to humiliate you. Of course not. Rose was going to be in the area and she wanted to talk to me.’

‘It might have suited Rose, Nathan, but was it the best thing for us?’ I strove to keep calm.

‘Oh, come on,’ he said, but he was on the defensive. Of course.

‘Look at us both,’ I pointed out. ‘All churned up.’

Nathan fished the whisky bottle out of the cupboard and poured himself a slug. ‘It’s not much to ask – can’t you be a little flexible and civilized about it?’

My anger escaped the leash. ‘Were you civilized when you left Rose? I think not. I don’t hold with this be-nice-at-any-price thing, Nathan. Even if she doesn’t show it, Rose hates me, and rightly so. I hate her.’

‘Why? She’s done nothing to you.’

We glared at each other. The adrenaline pumped through me, drained away and left me weakened. Of their own volition, my hands continued to rifle through the contents of the store-cupboard. ‘If you don’t understand, I can’t explain.’ My fingers encountered a stray – pasta shell, and I knew – I knew – that I was walking into a darkness of the spirit, that I was about to say things I would regret. ‘It’s not rational, certainly not civilized, what I feel about Rose. I hate her because… I’ve wronged her. Can’t you see that, you stupid man? It’s to do with the battle for possession – but I don’t think you wish to see it, let alone acknowledge it. And you want it both ways.’ I emptied the remainder of a rice packet (wild) into a glass jar. ‘You want to have me and see Rose. You want us all to be friends.’

Nathan sat down at the kitchen table and put his head into his hands. ‘Wouldn’t you like to be friends with her? You were once.’

I kept myself busy with the rice because I couldn’t bear to see his unhappiness. ‘You can’t have two faces looking opposite ways. As a matter of fact, you can’t have two wives. Not in this country, at least.’

I heard him swallow some whisky. ‘I can’t talk to you about this, Minty. It’s like trying to have a conversation in a foreign language or with a total stranger.’

That was more than enough. It was far too much. ‘OΚ, Nathan, let’s talk plain English. I think you’re hiding behind the let’s-be-nice mask because what you really want is to see Rose without feeling guilt.’

He made an indeterminate gesture with his hands, which, if I’d needed it, would have provided proof. ‘It’s meant nothing, has it?’ I threw at him. ‘And I’ve tried with you, and your family who loathe me. If you remember, you were the one who felt imprisoned in your marriage with Rose. You said, not me, that it was dull and void. That was why you left her. You convinced me, and I believed you.’

Nathan went white, presumably with fury, for I had pricked his vulnerable area: he didn’t like to be thought of badly. ‘Could I point out that you fell over yourself to believe me? You couldn’t get enough of how Rose had failed.’

‘Times change, don’t they? For two pins you’d go back to her. If it wasn’t for the children -’

‘Someone has to put their interests first!’ he cried.

A long, dangerous silence ensued. ‘I’ll forget you said that, Nathan.’

Another mouthful of whisky went down.

‘Don’t,’ I said sharply, alarmed at his pallor. ‘It’s not good for you.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Look at me, Nathan.’ Reluctantly, he did so. ‘Tell me the truth. You want to see Rose. You miss her. You find this marriage less than satisfactory. Disappointing. Is that plain enough for you?’

‘Stop it.’

‘Rose is more your age, Nathan.’

‘Stop it.’

‘Coward.’

Nathan snatched up his glass and left the kitchen. The study door banged shut.

‘Rice’, I wrote on Eve’s list. ‘Spaghetti shapes’.

I crept up to the boys’ bedroom, and peered through the door. There was a pillow on the floor, and Lucas had flung his teddy bear to the other side of the room. The shade on the nightlight had been knocked askew. My fingers twitched to put everything in order.

I leant against the door jamb, closed my eyes and imagined a future that featured hundreds of objects to pick up. And hundreds of shopping expeditions: tins of soup, cartons of orange juice.

Every year I would have to buy larger clothes for the twins. They would demand to play cricket and football. Football! Maybe Felix would prefer to learn the violin or the piano. That would cost money. Where would it come from? Barely a week went by without Nathan saying, ‘We have to be careful. Our funds aren’t limitless.’ What he meant was that he was still paying Rose for her share of our home. Nathan might get ill. He was at the age when the body began to slow down. He would demand more peace and quiet. Where was that to come from?

That night, I slept in the spare room. Rattled and miserable, I dipped into the poems in Origin of a New Species, which Ellen had sent me. The publisher had been generous – or rash – and bound them in stiff board with facsimiles of her writing on the endpapers. The tides ranged from the epic ‘Men’s Lament’ to the domestic ‘The Object in the Fridge’, and the eponymous ‘Origin of a New Species’.

At forty-seven, I have reached the age of reason

No longer female, but no man either

Triumph?

Two pieces of news here. The narrator had a decade on me, and the outlook was not all bad. Throughout, the language was littered with references to ‘banging’, ‘clacking’, ‘clashing’ and ‘the rush of dark tides’ – enough to keep a small orchestra busy – and its noise permeated my sleep.

Some time during the night, one of the boys cried out and I heard Nathan moving around their bedroom, his voice low and hushed, soothing whoever it was.

In the early morning, Nathan slid into the bed, dragging me up from the long, slow depths. He was cold and needy. He spooned himself round me, and placed his mouth on my bare shoulder. ‘Why didn’t you come back? You should have come back, Minty. We shouldn’t have slept on our anger.’

‘Because…’ I murmured, ‘… officially I hate you.’

‘I was wrong, Minty, not to say anything. OK?’

I felt the bitter chill of not getting anywhere much and the sadness that descends after a major quarrel. ‘OK.’

He smelt of sleep, his breath of whisky. ‘What happens today, Minty?’

Ellen’s poems were still racketing around my head. ‘I don’t know what happens today.’ Then I remembered. ‘It’s Parents’ Evening at school. Are you coming?’

‘Yes.’ His reply was barely audible. ‘But probably late.’

I was suddenly alert. ‘Do you need to tell Roger?’

Nathan chuckled in my ear. ‘Roger’s not my keeper. But if he asks I’m seeing the lawyer.’ Nathan’s fingers walked across my shoulder. ‘I don’t like lying. Much. But I have an idea you may be right.’

They were not our best sheets as they had too high a percentage of man-made fibre in the cotton but, for that reason, they were ideal for guests. ‘You and I “worked late” most evenings. Remember?’

Nathan pressed the nervy point between my shoulder-blade and my spine. ‘I didn’t feel I was lying then. Isn’t that strange?’

Those days had been made up of… what? Episodes that featured the pitching stomach, unreliable knees and fast-beating heart of the clichés? Yes and no. Certainly I had been dazzled and mesmerized by my own power. ‘Get over it, Nathan. Most working mothers lie every day,’ I said, then added, ‘A check-up is a good idea.’ His body was warming up. ‘Are you feeling OK?’

‘Fine. Don’t fuss.’

If I had been more collected, I might have pointed out that I was only fussing because lately he had been behaving like a man of a hundred and ten. Furthermore, I reckoned we could alter our routines a little bit, do things in a different way, exercise more. The twins would love him to take them bowling. Or to play football on the common.

‘As a matter of interest, have you ever considered that Roger is nearing retirement? Well, if you haven’t, and I bet you have, why don’t you think about his successor? They might get rid of Roger sooner rather than later.’

Nathan poked my hip. ‘A little tasteless?’

‘Yes – and?’

He changed the subject. ‘Has Barry said any more about you going full-time?’

‘He’s still thinking about it.’

There was a small silence.

‘About Rose, Minty.’

The sigh came from a black and bitter place. I was heartily sick of Rose. What about her?’

‘Why don’t you remember sometimes that you were friends? Good friends.’

Mornings in the Vistemax office that smelt of bad coffee and photocopying and Rose saying, ‘Here, take these,’ and passing over several dozen manuals on low-fat/no-fat/Outer Mongolian cuisine, or Five Hundred Ways to Thinner Thighs. ‘You deal.’ Coming in once, and finding her weeping, her too-pink lipstick smudged and the ends of her hair damp with rain. ‘It’s Sam,’ she confessed. ‘He’s having a hard time with his girlfriend, and I can’t bear it.’ I had put my arm round her and kissed her cheek.

‘Nathan. Please shut up.’

Their shared history, their shared children, their past – all mixed up together. ‘Nathan, Rose said there was something else you had to discuss…’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It was nothing.’

‘What was it?’

There was a pause. ‘Nothing worth bothering about.’

You know what they say? When the mistress marries her lover, a vacancy is created.

He moved even closer and his hand snaked between my thighs. His stubble was grazing my skin. ‘Minty, about what we said last night…’

Nathan probed even further and I bit my lip. He was hot now, and urgent. In our bedroom downstairs, my skirt and jacket were waiting on a chair. I had sufficient change in my purse for the morning’s journey and a cappuccino. The bag containing my documents was zipped and ready to go. By my reckoning, I had precisely an hour to get the twins and myself up, breakfasted and ready to go.

So much in life is about timing. Truly it is.

His voice echoed in my ear: ‘About last night…’ And then I realized what Nathan was doing.

‘Oh, my God, Nathan…’

His fingers dug into the soft part of my arm. ‘Minty… I’m sorry about not warning you. She looked good, didn’t she? Rose seemed in charge. Happy. That’s good, isn’t it? I’d never seen her hair that long before…’

He turned his face to me, and his eyes burnt with a fever that was not of my making.

With all my strength, I pushed him away. ‘I’m not… Rose. Do you understand? I’m not Rose.’