The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

12

The dark has never held any real terrors for me. It was the time in which hot, pleasurable things were accomplished. It was the moment to dream, to plan, to sleep: to touch a warm, sleeping body, and marvel at its beauty, or its power, or to realize that you hated it.

But I went to bed that night in fear.

There were scattered clues that I had come home and gone through the motions but I cannot remember much. A waterfall of socks, pants and trousers flowed out of the boys’ linen basket. In the bathroom, my flannel was damp. In the bedroom, my shoes had been put away in the cupboard. In the kitchen, the dishwasher had been switched on and was ready to unload. A half-empty tin of tuna from the boys’ supper was wedged between the cheese and the bacon in the fridge.

Eve and I had whispered to each other while the boys romped upstairs. ‘So dreadful, Minty.’ Her complexion combined an agitated red and white, and she had brushed her hair flat. ‘Poor, poor Nathan.’ She sketched the sign of the cross on her breast. Not once but twice, and I suppressed a hysterical desire to hiss, ‘That won’t help him now.’

‘Eve, we won’t tell the boys until tomorrow… after school.’ She looked sceptical, and I summoned the energy to persuade her. ‘It will be easier for me. It’ll give me time to do some things before I concentrate on them. I can make arrangements…’

‘OK.’

I knew I should be doing things – but what? There were procedures, but unknown ones. Then there were questions to be answered.

I rang Theo, Nathan’s lawyer, and was forced to repeat that Nathan is dead because even über-professional Theo could not believe it. ‘Will you help me?’ I begged him. I was frightened that Vistemax would not honour Nathan’s severance package.

‘Don’t worry’ Theo was swift with reassurance. He clicked his tongue. ‘Hear that? That’s the sound of the bit clinking into place between my teeth. They’ll pay’

I rang Barry to tell him. ‘This is so awful.’ His voice oozed genuine concern. ‘Awful. You’re not to think of setting foot in the office for the time being. We’ll see to everything. I’ll brief Chris.’

Chris would steal my ideas.

So be it.

But I had already forgotten Chris Sharp when I rang Paige. A similar species of words filtered down the telephone – it was the stockpile on which we drew in moments of blackness and emergency. ‘So awful.’ Paige was stuttering with shock. ‘Terrible, Minty. Can you manage? I’m so sorry I can’t help at the moment. Linda can come and take the boys.’

‘I haven’t told them yet. I’m waiting for the right moment.’

Paige could not, and did not, resist this challenge. ‘Won’t they guess something’s up?’

‘I’m good at pretending.’

There was a small silence. ‘Yes, I suppose you are.’

Between these conversations, I did my best to make a list. But it proved beyond my powers. I struggled with words such as ‘probate’, ‘death registration’ and ‘newspaper announcement’, but they refused to slot into their hierarchy.

‘Mum.’ Lucas ran into the house and hurled himself at me. ‘Mum, read me a story.’ He was glowing with exercise, so winning and wholesome that any film director who happened to be passing would have scooped him up.

A hand slipped into mine. ‘Hello, Mummy’ It was Felix. ‘You look sad. Are you sad, Mummy?’

I bent down and pulled them into a hug. Their small hard heads butted into my chest. They were now my entire responsibility.

Nathan was with me throughout that fear-filled night. We were in the sitting room. The clock ticked on the half-moon table by the window and we were arguing about it. Nathan thought it would be safer on the mantelpiece. ‘Please do as I wish, Minty.’ I glanced up from a card of paint samples and heard myself say, ‘Do you think Eastern Beige would look right in here?’

‘Eastern Beige,’ he retorted. ‘Compost, more like.’

Nathan was in the garden, in his brown corduroys, favourite blue shirt and a pair of Wellingtons, digging under the lilac tree. On the landing, I was struggling to iron a shirt, which, however I stroked and stretched it, would not lose its creases.

Nathan pushed the fork into the earth, reached into the ground with both hands and extracted a bundle wrapped in a white wool shawl. ‘This is my secret grief, Minty,’ I heard him say, in that restless, half-conscious interlude.

The bedroom was airless, and I alternated between sweating and shivering, which, I supposed, was shock. Could I have done more? Yes, I could. Was Nathan so unhappy? Yes, he was… I fled upstairs to the spare bedroom. The bed was not made up but I slipped on to the bare mattress, pulled the folded duvet over me and stared into the darkness.

I could not see the painting on the wall above me in the dark but, with an internal eye, I traced those roses. I calculated their dimensions, the arrangement of the shapes on the canvas. I struck up an intimate acquaintance with each shade and tint, ticking them off on my fingers: chalk white, clotted cream, weak tea, and the blood-brown of the darkening petals scattered at the base of the vase.

When I could bear it no longer, I slid out of bed, reached up and turned the painting to the wall.

There. They had gone.

A little later – how long? – I found myself in Nathan’s study. I opened his filing cabinet to reveal the sections neatly labelled in black ink. ‘Insurance’, an orange file. ‘House’, blue. ‘Lawyer’, red. ‘Health’, yellow.

Why had he chosen yellow for health? It was not a good colour. Yellow was dispiriting and suggested disease. Yellow fever. Dengue fever. Malaria. Jaundice. I flipped it open at the back, then rifled through the documents from the bottom up.

There were assorted letters from doctors with addresses in Harley Street. One reported the results of an eye test. Another a blood test. All routine, all normal, negative, non-threatening. The top letter on the pile was different. It read: ‘Dear Mr Lloyd, As we agreed at our consultation, I have made arrangements for you to see my colleague, Mr Oxford, at the London Heart Hospital. I have explained my concerns – blood pressure, murmur, etc. – and he will proceed with the investigation. If you would kindly get in touch with him directly…’

The letter was dated six months ago.

I reread the polite sentences. Behind the bland ‘concerns’ by a professional’s marker and coded allusion. Nathan, the consultant was suggesting, displayed a cluster of symptoms and was required to do something about it.

Nathan had failed to do so.

Angrily, I snatched up the letter. Why? And why had he not told me?

It would have been so easy to manage. We could have attended the appointment together. I would have sat meek as a mouse reading Country Life or dog-eared copies of Hello! in the waiting room while the highways and byways of his arteries and the chambers of his heart were flagged up on a screen elsewhere. As we listened to the verdict of what was wrong, I would have reached out and taken his hand.

He would only have had to say, ‘I’m having problems with my heart,’ for me to swing into action. It would have been a field day for lists. Low-cholesterol spread, green vegetables, vitamins, an exercise bike. And for timetables, which I was good at too. Exercise, 7-7.30 a.m. Breakfast, 7.45…

The enormity of Nathan’s silence was an excruciating reminder of how silent we had been during his life. I had failed to comfort him. I had not stroked his cheek. We had not waited stoically together in a consultant’s anteroom.

Neither had my phone rung this morning, and I had not picked it up to hear him say, ‘Minty, I’ve got something to tell you… It will be a shock.’

So he’d never heard my reply: ‘Vistemax sucks. Have you rung the lawyer? Nathan, this isn’t personal, you know…’ And he never heard me say, ‘Nathan, hold on. I’m coming over to get you and we’ll talk this through.’

Nathan had chosen to bury his anguish in silence, and then to seek out Rose.

But Nathan was dead.

I fell to my knees by the filing cabinet, placed my hands on the open drawer, for it held the facts – the hard facts of which I was so fond – of Nathan’s life.

I bowed my head and, finally, I wept.

It was three thirty in the morning on the first day of my widowhood.

At nine the following morning I sat at Nathan’s desk in his study. The boys had gone to school, and Eve was vacuuming in the room next door.

The phone rang. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You don’t have to say anything, Roger.’

‘I assume it was his heart?’

I put down the phone. It rang again almost immediately. ‘If there’s anything we can do, it shall be done,’ said Roger. ‘Please will you let us know when the funeral is… Minty, I recognize that this is the most tragic, intolerable situation…’

Was this the moment to point out that Roger had made such a mistake in dismissing Nathan’s accumulation of experience for the sake of change? Should I also mention that he had almost certainly driven Nathan to his death?

‘I know you’ll have mixed feelings -’

‘No, Roger. Not mixed feelings. Very straightforward feelings.’

‘We were doing what was best for Vistemax.’

‘Peter Shaker? Really?’

There was nothing more to add. Roger was a businessman and I was a widow, and however much I might long to connect, there was no chance. Again, I terminated the conversation and took the phone off the hook. Not a moment too soon, for it was almost too much. And I could not let go. Not yet. Perhaps never.

The vacuuming drilled into my skull. I called, ‘Eve, could you stop that?’

She appeared from the sitting room. ‘You need clean house, Minty. People will come.’

Would they?

‘You look bad. I get you cup of tea.’

I sat at Nathan’s desk, holding the cup and wondering how long my fingers could stand the pain. That was easy to deal with – unlike the pain I must inflict on Lucas and Felix. An expert could tell me what to say. Experts had formulas at their fingertips. ‘Daddy has gone on a long journey, and won’t be coming back.’ Would that do? Or…‘Daddy is watching over you, but he can’t actually be here.’

The doorbell rang, and Eve clattered out into the hall.

It was Mrs Austen: crabby Mrs Austen. ‘Eve. We’ve just heard. Here is soup. My tomatoes. Feed it to them.’

Ten minutes later, the doorbell sounded again. This time it was Kate Winsom from across the road. ‘This is so awful,’ I heard her say, as I cowered in the study. ‘Look, I’m off to the supermarket. Can I do the shopping? Tell Minty I’ll be in touch at a more – at a more appropriate time. Unfortunately, I have to fly now. The children…’

For the tenth time, I attempted to make a list. But what good was that?

The doorbell – oh, that doorbell – rang and I pressed my face hard into my fingers. Next thing, I felt a light touch on my hair. Gisela said, ‘I came as soon as I could.’

I reared my head. ‘You knew what Roger was going to do and you didn’t tell me.’

‘Would you have expected me to? Would you have done? But I was going to drop a hint at lunch.’ She slid a finger on to my pulse and felt it. ‘Have you slept? And when you did you last eat?’

My hair felt hot and heavy, and I pushed it back. ‘Cup of tea. I don’t know, Gisela.’

She bent over me and spoke with an urgency I had never heard before. ‘You’ll need your strength, Minty. You have the twins to think about. I’m going to get you some more tea and some toast.’

She led me into the sitting room, and eased me down on to the sofa. ‘You will remain there until I come back.’

The morning light streaming into the room was so bright it hurt my eyes. I looked out of the french windows. The lilac tree was unfurling its first buds and, in the neighbouring garden to my right, a magnolia had unleashed tiers of porcelain-cup blossoms.

‘Spring is cruel,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ Gisela had returned with a tray. She put it down on the coffee-table, reached into her handbag and switched off her mobile.

‘Goodness,’ I said. ‘It must be serious.’

The sun lit a patch of carpet that years of exposure had changed from dark grey to a lighter shade. I heard Nathan, so clearly: ‘No, we can’t afford a new carpet.’

‘Minty…’ Gisela picked up a finger of toast spread with butter and Marmite. ‘Eat.’

‘I never touch butter, Gisela. Waistline.’

‘You do today.’

I took the toast from her and chewed. The tang of Marmite was not disagreeable, and the tea was hot and strong. Gisela sipped from a second mug. ‘Terrible tea. What is it?’

‘Ordinary stuff. I don’t know’

‘Lapsang’s better.’

Cross out ‘Ordinary stuff’ on weekly shopping list and substitute ‘Lapsang’.

From her vantage-point, Gisela appeared wise and Buddha-like. She was filled with substance and purpose while, overnight, I had shrunk into a depleted figure huddled on the sofa. ‘Minty. About Rose.’

That piece of information was a gold mine for clacking tongues. Do you know where he died? With his first wife. It was unlikely to remain secret.

‘Roger has talked to Rose. He rang her after he spoke to you. He’s going to see her this afternoon.’

‘But not coming here?’

‘I’m here.’ She reached over to put her mug on the tray. ‘You know, cutting Roger off isn’t going to raise Nathan from the dead.’

‘No.’ This exchange was superfluous because at that point Nathan did not seem to be dead. He was there, in the sitting room, because I could feel him very strongly.

Gisela continued, ‘Let me advise you. Don’t ignore Roger’s offer of help. You’ll need it.’

The remaining Marmite soldier sat an angle on the plate, so I adjusted it. ‘Nathan was the reliable one. He was a man who tried to be the person who never left you in the lurch. But it was all too much for him. Leaving Rose. Marrying me. Vistemax. He couldn’t keep the bandwagon rolling. His body protested.’ I was feeling very odd behind my eyes. ‘Am I making sense?’

Gisela was wearing one of her blindingly white blouses, with three-quarter-length sleeves and tucking across the breast. It was French, of an exquisite cut. A rope of large pearls circled her throat, with matching ones in her ears. She was hunched forward on the chair, her body language spelling pity, pity. ‘I don’t expect you to make sense.’ She pulled a notebook out of her bag, wrote something and tore out the page. ‘I can’t do much for you, Minty, except help with the small things. Here’s the name of a good florist. Just tell them what you want for Nathan and they’ll understand.’

Florist? ‘Thank you.’ My lips were trembling. ‘Did Roger say how Nathan was yesterday?’ Gisela made a play of stowing the notebook in her bag. ‘I’d like to know what he said, and how he looked.’

‘All right.’ She seemed almost to have been expecting my question. ‘Roger was dreading the meeting. Nathan was a friend – no, don’t look like that, Minty. You know it as well as I do. Roger told him straight. At first Nathan didn’t say much.’ Gisela paused. ‘Roger said he walked over to the window and turned his back on him. It was a shock, he said, and he needed a minute or two. Then he went on to the attack. He told Roger the decision was crazy and wrong. Furthermore, Vistemax did not need destabilizing at the moment.’

‘Nathan fought back.’ To those who knew him intimately, the signs would have been readable. When he tightened his mouth, things were not good for the opposition. If he dug a hand into a trouser pocket, he had worked out the strategy.

‘I have never seen Roger so sad, so rattled. At the prospect… of doing it,’ Gisela offered. ‘And Nathan gave him very hard time.’

‘Gisela, Nathan was about to lose everything’

‘Not everything. He had you and the boys. Roger reckoned that he might quite glad of a period at home to see more of the twins.’

I stared at her, astonished. ‘Nathan was sacked because Roger thought he’d make a good nanny?’

Gisela’s lips barely moved. ‘Nathan had had a good innings.’

‘Let’s hope Roger can be as philosophical when it’s his turn to head back to the pavilion.’

With a touch of panic, Gisela said, ‘There’s no need, Minty -’

‘Roger really concluded that Peter Shaker was a better man than Nathan?’

Gisela rearranged the cuff of her dazzling shirt. ‘Is it the right time to discuss all this? It’s impossible to be rational.’

‘Oh, rationality,’ I said. ‘It’s overrated.’

I got up and went to the half-moon table. I lifted the clock and placed it on the mantelpiece in the space Nathan had always intended for it.

Gisela picked up her bag. ‘I must go. But remember, Roger will help if he can. I’ll do all I can with the arrangements. If you like.’

I heard myself cry, ‘Why did Roger do it?’

Gisela put down her bag again, and looked deeply into my eyes. ‘That’s the way it is. Nathan did it to others, remember.’

‘But it killed him.’

‘No, it didn’t. Nathan liked his whisky, he had a stressful job. He had a… busy home life. A large family. Those things contribute. It wasn’t getting the sack, Minty. Nathan’s heart condition killed him.’

The doorbell continued to ring, but I let Eve deal with it. Each time she returned bearing something. A bottle of wine with a label that read, ‘Condolences.’ A paperback entitled Wills and Probate. The cover was coffee-stained and many of the pages were dog-eared. In the section entitled ‘14.4.3, Fair Division Between Parties’, someone had scribbled violently in the margin, ‘I should be so lucky.’ Who had sent it, I asked Eve, but she said she hadn’t recognized the woman.

Wills and Probate lay on the kitchen table in front of me. I supposed the rest of the world was carrying on nicely without Nathan. Chris Sharp had probably enjoyed a good day. Peter Shaker’s wouldn’t have been too bad either, except for the odd jab of conscience. I felt sorry for Carolyne, who would be caught between loyalty to her husband and her strict notions of what was correct. Booting out Nathan in favour of Peter would not come under her heading of the latter.

Someone walked into the kitchen. ‘Martin,’ I said.

He placed a cling-wrapped Pyrex dish on the table and bent to kiss my cheek. ‘I came as soon as I could and I’ve brought a macaroni cheese.’

I cast around for the polite response. Any response. ‘Lucas loves macaroni cheese.’

He sat beside me and took both my hands in his. ‘Paige asked Linda to make it.’ There was a pause. ‘This is terrible, Minty, but you’ll survive. That’s what I’ve come to tell you. It might seem that you won’t, but you will’

His grasp was cool and firm, and I was grateful for it. ‘Keep telling me that, Martin.’

‘I have every intention of doing so.’

The macaroni cheese had been made to perfection with a crisp cheese crust on top. ‘I’m not sure what to do first.’

Martin let go of my hands, and took a piece of paper from his breast pocket. ‘I’ve made a list,’ he said, ‘cobbled together from what I remember when my parents died. Funeral arrangements -’

‘A list!’ I exclaimed. ‘You made a list when you have so many other things to do.’

‘That’s what friends are for.’ Martin handed it over. ‘It helps to have something concrete to think about.’

‘How are Paige and the baby?’

He frowned a trifle. ‘They’re fine. I’m not sure how much rest Paige is getting.’

‘Are the nights bad?’

‘I’m in the spare room at the moment.’

It was getting dark, and the lights needed to be turned on, but I did nothing about it. Martin and I sat in the kitchen while dusk crept in, and I was grateful, oh, so grateful, for his presence.

‘No story tonight,’ I said to the boys. ‘I want to talk you.’ They were scrubbed, shining, hopeful. ‘It’s about Daddy.’

Two pairs of trusting eyes fixed on me. I patted Felix’s bed. ‘Come and sit beside me.’

Felix settled on my right, Lucas on my left. I put my arms round them and held on tight. Felix wriggled free, slid down and fetched The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He held it out to me with both hands. I shook my head. ‘No story tonight, Felix… Daddy…’ I faltered, and stopped. ‘He…’ I was searching for the words – the right words, the best possible ones. I was searching for control. That I must exert. I was searching to help them travel through a grief-stricken future.

‘Daddy.’ Lucas was confident and giggly ‘Our daddy?’

‘Yes, your daddy.’

Felix picked up Blanky, hauled it up and climbed back into a position against me: a warm, surprisingly solid weight for his size.

‘Daddy loved you very much,’ I said, and pulled them closer, ‘and he will always be with us, but I’m afraid something’s happened to him…’ I choked and struggled to continue. ‘He got very ill, and his heart couldn’t beat and he died. He’s gone away and he won’t be coming back.’

Lucas burst into tears. ‘He promised to come to the football.’

I experienced an overwhelming sense of heaviness and defeat. ‘Lucas, Daddy can’t come to the football.’ I took his little hand and stroked it. ‘He would have come if he could.’

‘Where’s he gone to?’ Lucas’s sobs were panicky.

‘He’s gone up into the sky. He can probably see us, and he’ll think about you all the time. I’m going to take care of you, and we shall be together. And we’ll think about him a lot, won’t we, boys?’

Felix wriggled out of my embrace and went to the window. ‘Naughty Daddy,’ he said angrily.

‘Daddy’s not naughty, Felix,’ I said. ‘He couldn’t help it.’

‘Naughty, naughty’ Felix repeated. Then he said, ‘There’s Tigger in the street.’

‘Come back, Felix.’

But he shook his head and remained stubbornly by the window. Lucas sighed and looked up at me. ‘Does that mean we’ll be a getting a new daddy to drive the car?’