The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

17

Rose walked into the hall and waited. Her gaze travelled over the unopened post on the table to the moraine of shoes and jackets at the foot of the stairs and the pile of ironing on the chair.

‘Don’t look at how untidy it is,’ I said. ‘It’s been difficult.’

‘Of course.’ Up close, Rose had as dark a pair of shadows under her eyes as I did. ‘Of course you won’t have been able to cope.’ She fixed on Nathan’s coat, still on the peg. ‘When Nathan left, it was the same. Stuff everywhere. No sense to the day. No shape.’

I bristled. ‘Do we need to rake over old ground?’

‘There isn’t any point in pretending that what happened didn’t.’ Rose’s shrug had changed. It was no longer weary and burdened, as it had been years ago, but light and sophisticated, an almost Gallic gesture.

I led her into the kitchen. She placed the package on the table. ‘You’ve made it nice,’ she said. ‘Different, but nice.’ Her eyes flicked towards the door. ‘How are the boys? Are they in?’

Again I bristled. ‘They’re in the garden.’

Her eyes went past my left shoulder to the back door. ‘I didn’t catch more than a glimpse of them at the funeral. It… gave me quite a shock to see how like Nathan they are. Is Felix the one with the slightly fairer hair?’

‘No. That’s Lucas.’

‘They seemed big for five-year-olds.’

‘They’re six,’ I said. ‘They were six in March.’

‘Sam was nothing like Nathan until he was eighteen or so. Then he turned into Nathan’s clone. I wonder if they’re going to be tall like their father.’

‘I have no idea.’

If Rose imagined that she could spread her maternal wings over my children, she was wrong, wrong. ‘I could never fault her as a mother,’ Nathan said. ‘Never.’

I gestured towards the kettle. ‘Can I make you some coffee?’

‘No, thank you.’

The shadows of four children fell over the ensuing hard, cold silence.

I broke it: ‘The twins are not your business, Rose. I don’t know what Nathan was doing when he made that extraordinary…’ I dropped my voice ‘… that senseless request. Was he having a huge joke at our expense? If I die or end up paraplegic or mad, my children will be with you. What was he thinking of?’

She moved restlessly. ‘Don’t make too big a deal of it, Minty. It’s optional and unlikely to happen.’

‘Even so,’ I said bitterly, ‘I don’t want you involved with them.’

‘For goodness’ sake!’ she flashed at me. ‘Do you think I want to be?’ She checked herself. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’ve realized I didn’t know Nathan at all.’

Rose sighed, and said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, ‘That’s what I thought when he left. It astonished me how little I knew about someone I’d lived with for so long. It happens all the time, and it’s probably better that you can’t pry into every nook and cranny of someone’s mind.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if Nathan was so bored that he dreamed up the guardian idea because it gave him something to think about.’ I knew perfectly well that I was traducing him.

And Rose evidently agreed with that: ‘If you think Nathan would have been so selfish…’ She sent me a glance that suggested no bridge would ever span far or wide enough to connect us. ‘He was only thinking about the twins.’ She tapped the package and said, without much enthusiasm, ‘Shall we get on with this?’

Smarting, I led her into the garden. But if I had been wrong to accuse Nathan of self-gratification, it did not mean that his motives had been entirely pure.

The twins had burrowed out of sight behind the shed. On our return from Cornwall, their heads filled with tales of pirates and rock fortresses, they had set up a camp, which, they had informed me, was very, very private.

‘Where are they?’ asked Rose.

I pointed to the shed. ‘In their headquarters. I think it’s the Jedi battle command.’

‘Ah,’ said Rose. She bent down and tugged at an elderly lavender bush. ‘You didn’t care for my garden. You never did.’

Rough, moss-infested grass. Shrubs that required pruning. Overgrown flowerbeds. Casual outrages, the result of Nathan’s and my neglect. ‘No. I never did.’

She straightened up, a sprig of lavender in her fingers. ‘Funny, that. I imagined every blade of grass and leaf would be imprinted on my memory. But once you leave a place, you leave. Or, rather, it leaves you.’

I had devoted not inconsiderable time to imagining Rose’s feelings on being banished from her garden. ‘You mean you forgot about it?’

‘No, never that.’ She rolled the lavender between her fingers. ‘It holds the early days… of us… of me.’

‘Height, route and rest?’ I asked. ‘Did you build those in?’

‘Height? Route?’ Puzzled, she frowned. Then her brow cleared. ‘You’re talking about the plans I sent to Nathan. Did you like them? He asked me for some ideas and it sort of took off. I knew the garden inside out, after all.’

‘Actually, he never mentioned them. I found them in a notebook.’

‘Oh.’ Rose flushed fiery red, and her lips tightened. ‘If you like, I can send you what I suggested. I have a copy’

‘No.’ I said. ‘No.’

After a moment, she added, ‘I don’t think Nathan liked it that I didn’t mind doing the plans. I had an idea that he wanted me to say I’d have nothing to do with it. I think he was surprised that I didn’t mind. Anyway, that was why he ordered the rose, don’t you think?’

‘Probably’ I flapped a hand at a damaged section of fence. ‘The boys. Playing ball. It ought to be mended, but I was never interested in it. Nathan isn’t… I mean, Nathan wasn’t. Occasionally, he had a fit of conscience and did a bit of digging. When I moved in here he said that it had been your thing, not his. I took the implication to be that it wasn’t mine either.’

‘Poor Minty,’ said Rose, ultra-dry. ‘What a lot you had to put up with.’

There was a shout from behind the shed, and Felix emerged red-faced and wailing, ‘Mum! He hit me!’ He flung himself against my knees.

‘Shush,’ I said. ‘He didn’t mean it.’

Felix wailed harder, and I shook him gently. ‘Shush, Felix. Say hello to Mrs Lloyd.’

But Felix decided that he wanted a scene and upped the decibels. ‘Don’t show me up,’ I whispered to him, at which Felix threw himself down on the lawn and kicked his legs in the air. He looked like an angry insect. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of grinning Lucas waving a stick to which he had attached Felix’s Blanky. I transferred my attention back to the insect, who was now roaring. I tapped his bottom. ‘Stop it,’ I said sternly, which had no effect.

Rose said, ‘Oh dear,’ in the amused way of an onlooker when they really wanted to say, ‘Don’t you have any control over your children?’ The black rage, with which I was becoming familiar, swept over me. It was an ugly emotion and I manhandled the screaming Felix upright more roughly than I should have done. ‘Don’t you dare say anything, Rose.’

‘Why would I? It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘You know perfectly well why you would.’

She hauled a pair of gardening gloves out of her handbag. ‘Can I take a look in the shed?’

I bent over Felix. ‘Why don’t you show Mrs Lloyd the shed, and I’ll talk to Lucas?’ But Felix refused to co-operate and clung to my hand. As we passed the lilac tree, Rose paused and pulled a branch towards her for inspection. She exclaimed softly at its condition, then allowed it to snap back.

Weakened by neglect, the shed door shuddered when Rose opened it. The interior was festooned with spiders’ webs. A garden fork was propped against the wall, its tines caked with earth. There was a rusty trowel, a spade and a stack of flowerpots. A packet of fertilizer stood in a corner, so old that it had hardened into a lump. I prodded it with my foot. ‘Nathan always meant to take this to the council dump.’

While I cornered Lucas and ordered him to return Blanky, Rose ferreted around in the shed. She emerged with the fork and a trug with a splintered handle, into which she had teased a handful of the fertilizer. ‘Now’ She catalogued the wandering lines of the lawn, the tangle of weeds and grass, the unpruned clematis. She shaded her eyes with a hand, and I knew she was peering into the past. ‘If I’m truthful, I didn’t want you to be a gardener, Minty. Certainly not in my garden.’ Her eyes betrayed sudden amusement. ‘But I needn’t have worried.’ She picked up the package. ‘Where shall I plant this rose?’

‘I don’t want it.’

Her fingers curled round it protectively. ‘But Nathan sent it. He must have been thinking of us both. It belongs here, and it matters where it’s planted.’

‘What’s the point?’ I gestured at the garden. ‘It’s not likely to flourish.’

Rose hacked off the wrapping package with the secateurs. ‘I take it you’ll be living here for the time being?’

‘You know as well as I do that I have to be here. Anyway, the twins’ school is very close.’ I peered at her. ‘I assume you’ve talked to Theo about the will?’

‘Yes, I have.’ She wasn’t going to pursue the subject. ‘If you’re staying here you should think about the garden.’

Felix’s little fingers clenched mine. ‘Rose, I don’t think it’s your business.’

That silenced her. No doubt Rose was grateful for her little extra acquired immunity – she had had time to get used to being without Nathan. But I had not, and I was not under control. She did not challenge my rudeness but smiled at Felix, who had raised his head. His tears had ceased, and he was studying Rose with unabashed curiosity.

Rose crouched at his level. ‘We haven’t really said hello, Felix.’ She held out her hand. ‘I knew your daddy.’

Felix dropped my hand. ‘Daddy…’ he echoed, and favoured Rose with one of his devastating wide-eyed looks, which I knew could reduce its recipient to weak-kneed adoration. Rose’s eyebrows flew up and, in that instant, she had been ravished.

She swallowed. ‘He’s so beautiful, and innocent,’ she murmured. Her eyes filled. ‘And so like… him. But, then, what else would you expect?’

Felix moved closer to Rose. ‘Why are you crying? Mummy, why’s the lady crying?’

I gave him a little shove. ‘Go and find Lucas, Felix. I think he’s in your special camp.’

Felix required no further urging. He scampered round the shed and disappeared. Rose wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and sniffed.

‘They’re a little difficult at the moment. I’m feeling my way’

She didn’t answer. Hovering on the borderline between irritation and murderousness, I said, ‘Just shove the damn thing in, Rose, and go away.’

‘OK. I don’t want to be here any more than you want me.’ She began to pace up and down. ‘Here,’ she pronounced eventually. ‘If I plant it here you’ll be able to see it from the kitchen window.’

The fertilizer had leaked from the trug, and left a white trail over the lawn. Rose rubbed it in with her shoe and began to dig. Last night there had been drizzle, and the damp soil yielded easily to the fork.

I watched her. ‘When did Nathan ask for help with the garden?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Lots of little chats about it, then?’

‘A garden must have good bones,’ Rose would have said. Or something like it. And, no doubt, Nathan had hung on her words.

‘Nathan and I kept in touch. Obviously.’

Did the exchange of gardening notes constitute adultery? Yes, in a way – in a far more telling way than the slip-slap of flesh on flesh, and Elbow Talk in the panting aftermath. Nathan had wanted Rose’s opinion. He had wanted to help himself to her thinking and her creating He had asked to be put back on the distribution list of Rose’s intimacies. ‘I suggest an olive tree here. The lavender there.’

Rose sieved the stones that had worked their way to the surface and evened out the perimeter of the hole she had dug. Her body was toned, her waist defined. ‘This is crazy,’ I said, at last.

She continued to dig. ‘No, it’s not.’

‘I really don’t want it.’

Rose pulled herself upright and leant on the fork handle. ‘You. should want it.’

I closed my eyes. ‘Were you seeing a lot of Nathan?’

Her head whipped round. ‘I wasn’t seeing Nathan.’

‘Excuse me?’

The roots of the rose were dry and unpromising. Rose eased it into the hole, teased the roots apart and dribbled soil on to them. ‘It really should have soaked for a while, but no matter.’ She tamped down the soil with her foot. ‘Perhaps you should know, Minty, that it’s not possible to dismiss a marriage just like that. And, believe me, I wanted to.’ She looked up. ‘Hold this steady, will you?’

I obliged. Under my fingers the rose was thorny and unyielding. ‘How stupid did you want me to feel, Rose? Because I felt very stupid when I realized how often Nathan contacted you.’

‘Well, now you know what it’s like.’ Rose didn’t sound that interested. She slapped her gloved hands together, which made a dull, hollow sound. She began to say something, checked herself, and stepped back to survey her handiwork. ‘I wonder what he was thinking when he ordered this one. It’s a repeat flowerer.’

I swung round on my heel and walked back into the house. Behind me, I heard the rattle of the shed door, Rose’s footsteps on the patio, then her ‘Goodbye, twins. I hope to see you again.’ She is not having my children, I thought, bleak and unfair and sorrowing.

Rose came into the kitchen and placed the wrapping on the table. ‘I don’t know where you put the rubbish.’

‘Leave it.’

‘Fine.’ There was a short pause. ‘I must go because I have an article to write. Deadlines.’ The professional female was speaking to the professional female. You see and hear the exchange everywhere. Two women lunching: one or other taps her watch and murmurs, ‘The meeting’, or ‘You should see the house,’ or ‘I want to sleep for a decade.’ Rose and I used to talk to each other like that.

‘Go, then,’ I said.

She shook dirt from the gloves into the sink. ‘About the children, Minty…’

‘Don’t bring them into it. We’re doing fine. We’re coping.’ Felix’s little figure sitting at the foot of the stairs. ‘We’re doing our best. I don’t need help.’

Again, Rose glanced at her watch, and there was a degree of hesitancy. ‘Keep watering the rose for a few days.’

‘Rose, you are not involved. OK?’

She said softly, ‘Don’t take it out on Nathan.’

‘Nathan is dead,’ I hissed through my teeth. ‘Dead.’

Across the street Mrs Austen, who had given up hope of any further street theatre from number fourteen, was loading her car with plastic bags of rubbish. A lorry was depositing a builder’s skip on the opposite side of the road.

Provoked beyond endurance, I cried, ‘Did you plan this with Nathan in one of your cosy chats? Did he say to you, “Minty needs help. She’s not up to looking after the twins”? Which was his way of telling you I wasn’t up to scratch.’

‘That’s your interpretation, not mine,’ Rose said quietly. ‘I’m only their guardian if you’re not around. It was a precaution, that’s all.’

‘I wish you’d vanish,’ I said. ‘But you won’t.’

Rose swung round so abruptly that she dislodged a cup from the dresser, which fell to the floor. Neither of us moved to pick it up. It rolled away and came to rest by the table. ‘I don’t know what you spend your time imagining, Minty,’ her voice was flat, ‘but just think for a minute. I’ve tried to get rid of Nathan. After he went off with you… After you took him, I had to remake my life, and it was tough. I have no wish to be dragged back into his. Or yours. I don’t want anything to do with your children.’

‘Then go away.’

‘But equally I have no intention of vanishing, as you put it, for your convenience. I will do as I wish, when I think fit.’

Angry, jangled and edging closer to despair, I lay awake for much of the night. When Rose had brought me to number seven and introduced me to Nathan, it had been a warm night. ‘Perfect, Minty, for dinner in the garden. Do come.’ Before the introductions were completed, my disloyalty to her had already taken shape. It hadn’t been difficult to effect. As the three of us discussed the nature of long-lived friendships, I looked at Nathan and widened my eyes a fraction. It was sufficient.

He said to me afterwards, ‘I don’t know what came over me, Minty. I’ve sometimes been tempted before, but I’ve never done anything.’

In the end, we had married thinking the other had wanted the opposite of what they really did. In a rush of blood to the brain, Nathan had abandoned Rose and their life in Lakey Street because he had developed a yen for something that was unpredictable, spontaneous and glamorous. He wanted to try another way of living before it was too late. ‘Your flat is perfect,’ he said, flinging himself on to the – necessarily – small double bed. ‘We’re free of all those tedious domestic complications.’

I didn’t tell him that he wasn’t seeing straight. That would have embarrassed him. No one wishes to be told that they’re trying fruitlessly to turn the clock back.

‘You do understand?’ he asked.

I stroked his face. ‘We’re as free as birds.’

I didn’t confess to entertaining an attractive mental picture of a woman moving around the kitchen at number seven or presiding over the dinner table, clean socks in the drawers, milk in the fridge, soap in the bathrooms, in a house where there was plenty of space. That woman was me.

The clock said 5.15 a.m. I ran my hand over my body, and felt my ribcage and hipbones outlined more sharply than before. My eyes stung, my head was thick and heavy. There was no more sleep to be had that night. I got out of bed, went downstairs and let myself out into the garden.

It was chilly and I shivered. A spot or two of rain fell on to my face as I picked my way over the lawn.

I should have been honest with Nathan and told him, ‘We won’t be free. It isn’t like that.’

His death – his untimely, stupid death – deserved to be marked by more than small eruptions of anger between Rose and me. Nathan was owed a banquet, a cinematic farewell, a clash of cymbals. I owed him an august sorrow that would cleanse any spite, guilt and disappointment.

I knew this. I knew it very well. And yet I found myself staring down at the rose. I reached over and grasped it by the stem. A thorn drove itself into the base of my thumb and a pinprick of blood appeared. With a little gasp of pain, I pulled the rose from the earth.