The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

13

Felix climbed into my bed and woke me. ‘Mummy, where’s Daddy?’

It was six o’clock and I had just fallen into a heavy sleep, but his question sent a shock through me. Through stiff lips, I murmured, ‘Do you remember we talked about it last night, Felix? Daddy’s gone away to where he’s very happy and peaceful.’

The voice in my ear was insistent and anxious. ‘Are you going away too?’

I wrapped him in my arms, and we ravelled into a knot of limbs under the duvet. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Promise?’ Felix wound his leg round my torso, and pressed his head into my chest. Bolted together in that innocent, sad embrace, I pictured the river of DNA that flowed through me into him. I was him. He was Nathan. He was me. Never before had I chosen my words with such care: ‘I have no intention of going away, Felix. I’ve got you both to look after.’

Felix’s grip loosened. ‘Daddy’s naughty to go away.’

Nathan had had no choice. He had not wanted to go. Either of those statements would have been true. Yet even a child could spot how hopeless and insecure they made the world appear, and the point of being a parent was to persuade your children that they were safe.

After a while, Felix relaxed. His body grew heavy and his breathing regular. I lay with my arms still round him as the sounds of the day outside multiplied and I knew I had to get up and face it.

The boys and I got dressed together. ‘I bet I can put my trousers on quicker than you can put your socks on.’ I held up a red pair and a blue one.

‘Quick,’ said Lucas, and hauled off his pyjamas. His bottom had a picture of a cat on it, drawn in black Biro.

‘What on earth have you two been doing?’

At the breakfast table, I said, ‘If you eat all your cereal, you can have ice-cream for supper and an extra long story at bedtime.’

In that way, with stops and starts, bribes and games, we got through that early morning and breakfast. That was how it would be for a good while: games, subterfuges and stratagems to make the days pass.

After Eve had taken them to school, I cleared the table and tidied the kitchen. I’m a widow, I thought, as I swished water round the sink.

As I went upstairs to make the beds, the letterbox in the front door rattled. The flap was lifted and an eye peered through. I recognized it, and opened the door. ‘There’s a perfectly good bell,’ I said to Poppy’s stooping figure.

‘Minty’ Poppy levitated smartly. ‘I wasn’t sure about coming here but Mum sent me. There are things we need to go over.’

Clad from head to toe in black, her eyes red and sore, she looked frail and devastated. Pity for her and Sam, pity for the boys, pity for myself swamped my tired mind. ‘I don’t know what to say, Poppy, except that I’m so sorry.’

‘Sorry’ She experimented with the word. ‘I didn’t see him last week as usual. I cancelled because… well, because… something came up.’ She grimaced. ‘Isn’t that typical of Fate – or whoever? Just so cruel.’

‘Yes, it is.’

Richard had been parking the car and joined us. He was dressed for the office. He gave me a quick hug. ‘Minty, are you all right?’

‘You’d better both come in.’ I stepped aside. Richard placed an arm round Poppy’s waist and guided her into the house. Poppy’s eye fell on Nathan’s coat, which was hanging on its peg, and she stopped in her tracks. ‘That’s his. Oh, Dad.’

Richard manoeuvred Poppy past the coat and into the kitchen. ‘Poppy hasn’t been too well since she heard the news.’ He eased her into a chair and brushed the hair off her forehead. ‘Not surprisingly.’ He turned to me. ‘I hope someone’s been looking after you, Minty.’

A hand squeezed my throat without compunction. The only person who was likely to take care of me was dead. ‘Eve and the neighbours have been very good.’

Poppy’s haunted gaze roved restlessly over the objects in the kitchen. ‘Everything will change, won’t it?’ She glanced at Richard. ‘I woke up this morning, and it seemed fine. Then it wasn’t. Can you afford to stay here? You won’t have to sell the house?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll have to find out. I’m still trying to take everything in.’

‘Sorry,’ said Poppy. ‘That was stupid of me. Unfeeling.’ Her frailness was emphasized by the thin wrist she raised to her forehead. ‘I’m sure Dad will have provided…’ There was a tiny pause. ‘… for everyone.’

Very occasionally during the past few years, I had wondered if Poppy and I could skirt past Rose and become friends. Everyone benefited from an alliance within the family on which they could call at times when the chips were down. In this case, Poppy and I might have achieved something rather wonderful – a transformation where none had seemed possible.

But we had not.

‘Where are the boys? How are they? I can’t bear to think of them. At least… they’re so young. Maybe it helps if you’re that age. Maybe you don’t feel… quite… in the same way, I mean.’

‘It’s a nice theory,’ I said.

Richard positioned himself behind his wife, and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It will take time,’ he said, in his practical way, ‘but they need normality, not you weeping over them.’

‘That’s not fair.’ Poppy jerked away from him.

I seized on his lead. ‘The boys are at school. They break up on Friday. We’re trying to keep their routine as usual. They’re bewildered, but OK. So far. I tried to tell them in the best way I could but they don’t really understand. How could they? They’re so little.’

Poppy made an inarticulate noise and covered her eyes with both hands. Richard cleared his throat, and said, very nicely, ‘Would you like us to have them for a day or so? Poppy and I could take them for the weekend. Rose said she’d help.’

I had a sudden and terrible premonition of what life would be like without them. ‘No, please, no!’ I hadn’t intended to be so confrontational but I couldn’t bear the idea. ‘They stay here. You mustn’t steal them.’

‘Minty,’ Poppy sat up straight, ‘we didn’t want to steal them. We only wanted to help. We thought it might be best for them while you get on with arrangements.’

Richard was appalled. ‘The offer wasn’t meant in that way, Minty, believe me.’

I felt my way into a chair. ‘I’m sorry. Of course, you didn’t. Things are a bit odd at the moment, and I’m not sure what I’m saying.’ Richard looked as though he might understand. ‘It was kind of you, but I don’t think they’d want to be taken away from home by strangers.’

‘We’re not strangers,’ countered Poppy. ‘I’m their half-sister.’

I licked my lips. ‘Rose is a stranger.’

‘OΚ. OK. We’re not going to steal the twins, but the offer still stands, whenever you want to take it up.’ Poppy pushed herself awkwardly to her feet. She hesitated. ‘Was it… was it heart failure?’

‘Probably. We won’t know until after the postmortem.’

‘How typical!’ Poppy let out a passionate wail. ‘There was Dad just slogging on, providing for everyone. He must have been so worried, and he had no one to confide in.’

‘Poppy!’ Richard sounded a warning note. ‘We don’t know yet.’

She twitched a fold of her black skirt, which had caught on the chair, and said more quietly. ‘Now we’re all saying things we don’t mean. Sorry. We’re not ourselves.’ She crossed to the wooden dresser ranged along the wall, and ran a finger along a shelf. ‘He liked this, didn’t he? And he loved this blue and white plate with cabbage roses. I was with him when he bought it.’

‘Yes, he did.’

Richard interposed himself deftly between me and his wife. ‘I want to reiterate that if you need help with anything, Minty, you have only to ask.’ He shone with youth and affluence. The results of an organic diet and money were evident in his skin, the crocodile watch-strap and polished leather shoes. Once upon a time, Nathan would have shone with similar health and energy.

Poppy turned her attention to the back garden. ‘Poor Mum,’ she murmured. ‘She’s devastated.’

‘Minty is too,’ said Richard. If there was ever an order of honour for kind husbands with powers of restraint, Richard belonged at the head of it.

‘The garden needs work.’ Poppy shielded her eyes against the morning sun, which was sliding towards the lilac tree. ‘I suppose if Dad’s heart was playing up he didn’t feel like gardening and, of course, he had no help.’

There was a clatter by the front door, the hissed admonition, ‘That is not the action of a well-behaved person’, and Paige shuffled bulkily into the kitchen holding Lara’s hand and carrying the baby in a sling. ‘Minty, I came as soon as I could.’ She abandoned Lara. The baby bumped between us as Paige crushed her face to mine. ‘What can I say?’ Her cool flesh introduced a note of sanity, and I had never been so glad to see anyone in my life. ‘I used my key to get in.’ She held it up. ‘But you have company. I can always come back.’

Dear Paige. It must have been such an effort for her to get over here. ‘You remember Paige.’ I made the introductions to Richard and Poppy. ‘She’s just had a baby. And this is Lara.’

Lara was wearing a smocked blue dress and woollen cardigan. She looked cross and uncomfortable. The baby snuffled. Paige cupped a hand over his head. ‘Shush, Charlie,’ she murmured. ‘I’m so sorry about your father,’ she said to Poppy. ‘He was such a fine man. He’ll be missed.’

‘He was wonderful, wasn’t he?’ Poppy cried.

The grief in her outburst made us all wince. Richard put his arm round her. ‘Perhaps we should go,’ he said.

Poppy ignored him. ‘Minty, we need to ask you something,’ she shot a glance at Paige, ‘but it’s private. Family private. Some things need to be decided.’

Paige took the hint. ‘Lara darling, why don’t we find some of Lucas and Felix’s toys for you to play with?’ She cocked an eyebrow in my direction – which meant ‘Call if you want reinforcements’ – and disappeared. ‘Come along, Lara,’ we heard her say.

Poppy took a deep breath. ‘About where Dad’s buried. I… we feel strongly that he would wish to be at Altringham where he was bought up. He told Mum he would. He did. Ask her.’

All this was foreign territory, and Poppy’s declaration knocked the wind out of my chest. ‘He lived in London for most of his life, Poppy. And what about the boys? They’ll want to visit his grave and it should be easy for them to do so.’

‘You can’t want him in some grim, municipal cemetery. All that disgusting soil and traffic. I know he lived here, but now he belongs where he was brought up. Everyone does. It’s a sweet churchyard, all calm and peaceful.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. He must be near the boys.’

Poppy planted herself four-square in front of me. ‘Please, Minty. I beg you. I know we don’t see eye to eye, but we should be united on this.’ She clasped her hands, and added what she obviously considered the clincher, ‘It would help Mum.’ Her chest heaved and the kitchen was filled with a cold, terrible sadness.

There was a movement behind me, and Paige came back into the kitchen. She had taken off the sling and draped a muslin square with the baby over her shoulder. ‘Is it OK if Lara plays with…?’ She abandoned pretence. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing, and I know I’m interfering,’ she said, ‘but don’t you think Minty has a point? It’s important for Felix and Lucas.’

‘Please,’ Poppy sounded dangerously overwrought, ‘I don’t want to be rude to you. Please don’t interfere.’

‘The boys would want him here,’ I repeated stubbornly. ‘I want him here, in London.’

Poppy’s pupils enlarged so violently that I thought she was about to faint. ‘You never did think of anyone except yourself.’

The baby shrieked. Paige ignored him and went into battle for me: ‘As Nathan’s wife Minty has every right to decide where he’s buried. I’m sure that when you’ve thought about it you’ll agree.’ It was the calm, reasonable voice she had used for negotiations in the days when she had led the team.

My immediate concern was not to cry. I would have died rather than show my guilt and, yes, shame. Weakness too. Poppy’s black skirt whipped round her legs as she turned to Richard. ‘It’s no use.’

Over the head of his wife, Richard sent me a look that suggested he would deal with Poppy in private.

‘Richard,’ I said, ‘I’m not being difficult for the sake of it.’

‘No wonder,’ Poppy said slowly and quietly, ‘Dad’s heart wore out. It was worn out by you.’

‘That is outrageous,’ said Paige.

‘I will forget you said that, Poppy.’ To Richard, I added, ‘But you must both go now.’

They left behind the bitter residue of what had been said and thought. Paige dumped the baby in my arms, and shuffled painfully round the kitchen – ‘The episiotomy waltz, Minty’ – and made yet another pot of tea. She wrapped my fingers round the mug and kissed me.

I held on to the baby, whose tiny face was crumpled with the effort of being alive. ‘You know what I said about second-hand experience? Well, this isn’t.’

‘No,’ said Paige. ‘It can’t be.’ She sat down with a groan and reached for the baby. ‘Sorry about butting in. I phoned and phoned, Minty, but you never answered.’

I passed a hand over my face. ‘There were so many calls. I couldn’t cope with them.’

‘That’s why I’m here to help.’

‘That’s nice, Paige.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘My husband has died.’

‘Not all bad, then,’ escaped her, and was followed by, ‘Sorry. Unforgivable.’

Thus it was that I found myself sitting at the kitchen table rocking with hysterical laughter at Paige’s unforgivable joke. Charlie burped and regurgitated a stream of milk, and she dabbed at his mouth.

‘My husband’s for sale,’ she remarked. ‘Any offers?’

The post brought a copy of the post-mortem. I sat at the kitchen table and deciphered it word by word at the kitchen table, decoding the medical terminology to understand Nathan’s heart, lungs and brain.

The brain was fine. I could have told them that. Any fool (which included Roger) knew that. Snap, snap. The messages in that brain zipped unerringly from synapse to synapse. One of those messages had been a simple one: I must provide for my family. Another: Let me get on with my job.

Nathan’s lungs? For a man of his age, in excellent condition.

The arteries? They had been Nathan’s Achilles’ heel, if it could be put like that.

How often had I observed his outer casing? Hundreds of times. He was a man who looked good for his age. (NB A label that is quite different in meaning when applied to the male.) He looked right in his old blue shirt at home or on the beach, tousled and windblown. In his favourite grey office suit, he seemed substantial and capable of action. Yet, as it had turned out, that pleasing outer casing was host to those highways and by-ways that had hidden treacherous blockages.

Yet as I pondered and deciphered I saw so clearly that we are the architects of our own death. Nathan’s brain and lungs belonged to the successful, upright man. But layers of his secret grief had been laid down in his arteries, and they had killed him.

I abandoned the post-mortem on the kitchen table, unlocked the door and went out into bright sunlight.

It was spring.

Early in our affair, during one of the lunchtime sessions at my flat, Nathan gave me a Valentine. It was large, vulgar, and had a padded pink satin heart at the centre – his idea of a joke. Inside he had written: ‘In spring, thoughts turn to love.’ ‘Love,’ he had said dreamily, propped on an elbow, ‘I wish I could describe what it feels like…’ With his other hand, he ran his fingers up and down my bare shoulder, a whisper caress. ‘I had forgotten how perfect it is.’

Back in the office at Vistemax, a mini production crisis was brewing. While I was illicitly kissing her husband, Rose was snatching a sandwich at her desk and dealing with it.

‘You will forgive me,’ Nathan’s finger rested on my breast, ‘if I’m rusty on the subject.’

‘Of course,’ I answered. Now that the sex was over, I was impatient to be back in the office to see what was going on.

He lay back on the pillows. ‘I feel you’ve rescued me, Minty. Given me back a sense of purpose.’

‘Do you never talk to Rose about this sort of thing?’

He grimaced. ‘It’s easy to tell you’ve never been married.’

‘You must have done once.’

‘It gets buried, Minty, under the everyday.’ He held up a hand and ticked off his fingers: ‘Bills. Travelling to and from work. Endless discussions about the children. House maintenance.’

I remember feeling outraged on Rose’s behalf. That was to my credit, at least. ‘She only bore your children, kept house, warmed your bed and, no doubt, sorted your socks. All to make your life easy.’

‘I can’t deny it.’ Nathan pushed me down, and kissed me, his mouth hot and lazy with spent passion.

Had he, when he was married to me, purchased a bottle of good champagne and stolen a lunch-hour with Rose? Had he drawn her down on to the blue and white quilt, kissed her bare shoulders and, afterwards, propped himself up for the delights of Elbow Talk? Would he have confided to his ex-wife, ‘Minty and I only discuss bills and house maintenance but you, Rose, offer me love more perfect than I imagined?

I wish, I wish, I’d told Nathan then, over the padded satin heart, that I loved him, because it would have made him happy.

The lawn was ragged, and the boys had trampled the worm casts into the grass. Very soon I would have to think about mowing it, which I had never done. That had been Nathan’s department. Felix’s football had been abandoned by the door, and I picked it up. Flakes of dried mud dusted my fingers.

I was ravenous, but food made me nauseous. I choked when I bit into a piece of bread or tried to swallow a mouthful of soup. Yet hunger was making me shaky and weak. I held up my hands and examined them. The fingers were trembling. One of my thumbnails had torn on the lock, and a tiny pearl of blood was drying on the cuticle. I sucked at it. The metallic taste made me retch.

I halted by the lilac tree – such a perfect resting point in the route round the garden. (Rose knew that.) I looked up into it. A few leaves in a bright, trashy green had shaken themselves loose. The colours hurt my eyes; the sounds and scents of new growth were unbearable.

‘The young and pretty,’ one of Rose’s friends had comforted her when Nathan left her (and Poppy had told me), ‘can be pretty wicked. But they only get away with it for a short time.’

‘Nathan,’ I murmured, into that sparkling morning, ‘what would you want? Do you want to lie in a peaceful churchyard under the yews? Or would you rather be where you lived, fought, hustled and made your children?’

My eyes filled. I would definitely have to mow the lawn, and I hadn’t a clue how to set about it. Yet mowing lawns couldn’t be that difficult.