The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

20

‘Minty, you worried me last night.’ Gisela was blunt. ‘You looked terrible.’

Rule Five: apart from life or death situations, a friend’s duty is to lie.

‘It’s the toxins,’ I said. ‘They won’t be told.’

It was early on Sunday morning and we had escaped into the manicured manor grounds – ha-ha and borders, stone steps and an expanse of lawn – for fresh air before the day’s work. It was going to be hot, but we had caught the moment when the air and plants were fresh. It felt good to be alive.

Gisela pressed the case: ‘For obvious reasons, you’re not at your best,’ she lowered her voice sympathetically, ‘but is anything in particular worrying you? You can tell me, you know.’

‘It comes and goes,’ I admitted. ‘I panic’ Even to articulate the word caused the ever more efficient black feelings to take up residence in my chest. ‘I panic that I can’t carry what I’ve got to carry.’

Gisela, the adventurer and realist, understood perfectly. ‘You’ve got enough money, I take it? The pay-out?’ The insider who would be privy to the exact sum of the Vistemax severance package, courtesy of pillow talk, but could not admit it, she spoke with extreme delicacy.

‘Let’s put it this way, I need my job for the time being.’

She regarded me shrewdly. ‘Sometimes we get what we want.’

‘I didn’t want Nathan dead.’

‘I meant, you wanted a serious job. And at least you know what you have to do. There’s a lot to be said for that.’ She kidnapped my arm. ‘No feeling sorry for yourself. Understand? It’s the resort of the stupid. And don’t think, Minty.’

Between not thinking and not feeling sorry for myself, there wouldn’t be much space. But Gisela had a point: setting stern standards to curb internal wails was sensible and life-preserving.

She picked her way down the path, then ran alongside a herbaceous border and stopped by a plant blooming in a bright blue cloud. ‘Marcus was right to say that enough was enough, but I wish he hadn’t. Things were fine as they were.’

The bees were banqueting on this plant, and I bent down to thieve a sprig. Its smell was sharp and vaguely familiar and I tucked it into my pocket. ‘Fine for you, perhaps, but Marcus clearly has another point of view.’

‘That’s what I mean about not thinking, Minty. It weakens one’s position.’

It struck me then that Gisela and Roger made a perfect pair. Had he but known it Marcus, with his hopeless romantic notions about his dame lointaine, had lost out a long time ago. ‘Marcus has had a rough deal.’

An unseen string jerked Gisela round to face me. ‘What I can’t make Marcus understand is that living with a person you love is not necessarily the best thing.’

I glanced back at the venerable, grey-stone manor, every window polished, every blade of grass trimmed. It was expensive, exclusive and out of reach for most. ‘So that’s it,’ I said, tumbling to the whole picture at last. ‘You don’t want to lose all this. It’s too risky. Poor Marcus.’

Lymphatic drainage consisted of someone passing their fingers over my face and neck with fluttering movements. It was not unpleasant. In fact, it was the opposite, and I felt myself slip into drowsiness.

The fingers fluttered and stroked… Birds wheeling south… The beating of a moth’s wings at dusk… Little slaps of the sea on the shore.

I was trying not to think.

Little slaps of the sea… Like the sea at Priac Bay, which Rose had described so well that day – the day Nathan had died in her flat – and to which I had taken the boys.

It was a tiny bay, she had said. (She was right and the boys had loved it.) The coastal path ran along the cliff above it and there were always walkers tramping along. Correct. Thrift grew in clumps, sea grass and, at the right time of year, daisies. The sea can be many things, Rose said, but she loved it best when it was flat, you could peer down through its turquoise glimmer to hidden rocks and seaweed. From the coastguard’s cottage you could look out over the rocks where, centuries ago, wreckers had plundered stricken vessels. A path was cut into the cliff where the pack animals had waited as the looters scrambled up with their booty.

After a while, the fingers swept across my neck. ‘You’ll feel sleepy for the rest of the day,’ the girl informed me. ‘You must allow yourself to give into it.’

As I dressed, yesterday’s headache stole back. I checked my watch. Eleven o’clock. The day stretched out in a beautifully solipsistic shape. It would be the last one like it for a long time.

I made my way out of the beauty suite – all pink swags and niches where potions were arranged in tiers to be worshipped – and my mobile rang. I answered it.

‘Minty…’ Eve sounded hoarse and frantic. ‘I no well. I ill.’

I sat down on one of the chairs in the corridor – left, no doubt, to aid those weakened by the pursuit of beauty. ‘What sort of ill, Eve?’

‘I can’t breathe.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In bed.’

‘Where are the twins?’

‘At Mrs Paige’s.’ I heard her choke, and the phone was tossed around. The choking sounded serious.

‘Eve – Eve? Can you hear me?’ A nasty silence. ‘Listen, Eve, I’m coming home now’

Gisela understood, and did not understand. ‘I suppose you must go.’ Her tone implied that she could not conceive why the au pair’s illness could not be dealt with by someone else. ‘It’s only until tonight.’

‘I know. I’m so sorry.’ I was fully dressed, with my packed bag at my feet in Reception. There were two flower arrangements in pastel colours, a portrait of a girl on horseback in a tight green costume, and three receptionists with immaculate complexions. ‘I can’t thank you enough for your generosity, but I need to go back. If Eve is really ill, I must organize cover for work tomorrow.’

Gisela tensed impatiently. ‘Oh, well.’ She was cross because her present to me had been spoilt, and because she needed to talk to me further.

‘Let me know about Marcus.’

She took a step back. ‘Of course.’

I picked up my bag and heard myself say, ‘You will think about Roger?’ although why I should care about the man who sacked Nathan was a mystery.

She flung me a savage look. ‘Don’t worry about him. He gets exactly his side of the bargain.’

On the way back in the train, I stared out of the window at the speeding landscape and remembered the Nathan who, having left Rose, came to me alight with fervour. ‘I’ve done it, Minty.’ He kissed my arm all the way up its length. ‘I’ve left Rose. And it’s all going to be quite different.’

The discrepancy between his excited words and what we were alarmed me. This man had greying hair, a knee joint that ached and grown-up children: I fancied the Lexus, his credit card and the nice house.

But the curious thing was – the really, truly curious thing – I had believed Nathan.

Eve was curled into a foetal position in her bed. The window was closed so the room was stuffy and smelt of illness. There were a couple of glasses and a half-drunk mug of tea by the bed, with a packet of aspirin.

I saw immediately that the situation had progressed beyond aspirins. Within fifteen minutes, I had bundled Eve into the car and driven her to the nearest A &E unit.

Three unpleasant hours later, during which we had witnessed a drunken fight, a screaming girl put into handcuffs and a man covered with blood begging for help, a doctor announced, ‘Pneumonia,’ over the flushed, almost comatose Eve, with a veiled suggestion that it was my fault. He explained that Eve required a couple of days in hospital to stabilize her, then a period of careful nursing. Again, I caught a hint that it was up to me to make up for deficiencies in my duty of care.

I left the hospital, furious with him, with Eve, with myself, with everything.

Paige delivered the boys back to me. When I answered the door at number seven the twins, who hadn’t been expecting me, let out a collective shriek and windmilled at high speed into my stomach. ‘Careful, you two.’

‘You smell funny,’ said Lucas, sniffing my arm, which only that morning had been anointed by the handmaidens at Claire Manor.

‘Don’t you like it? It has roses and thyme in it.’

‘Dis-gus-ting.’

Paige brushed aside my profuse thanks and declined to come in. There was no mistaking the new coolness between us. ‘How is everything?’ I probed gingerly, but she wasn’t having any of it.

‘Before you ask, I can’t help out tomorrow’

‘Oh.’

Paige shook her head. ‘Can’t be done. Linda has a day off, and I’m busy with the children. Sorry.’ She softened. ‘Why don’t you try Kate Winsom or Mary Teight?’

She left with my thanks ringing in her ears. I hit the phone.

Kate Winsom’s son was going to tea with another boy after school. ‘I’m so sorry I can’t help, particularly as…’ She left me to conjecture the precise nature of her regret at my widowhood. Mary Teight had arranged to take her daughter to the doctor.

Millie’s mother, Tessa, was contrite: ‘Oh, Minty, I’m so sorry but Millie is staying with her father tomorrow. Why don’t you ring an agency?’

‘I would,’ I pointed out, ‘but today is Sunday.’

‘Can’t you take the day off?’

After Tessa my list of contacts ran out. I knew no one else – except Sue Frost, who didn’t count because I didn’t want unsolicited counselling on childcare. This state of affairs reinforced my sense of isolation.

While the twins ate chicken nuggets and chips, I paced up and down the kitchen, recalling Chris Sharp’s hard, hazel gaze – which wouldn’t soften if I rang up and said my childcare arrangements had crashed. From Barry’s point of view that eventuality came under ‘liability’ and ‘not on top of the job’.

Gisela rang to check that I’d made it back home and to tell me about the marvellous facial I’d missed. ‘They used mud imported from the Dead Sea. Have you sorted things out? What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied truthfully.

She tsk-tsked. ‘It can’t be that difficult, surely?’

There spoke the childless woman. ‘Gisela, I’m sorry we didn’t have time to talk things over further. Have you made your decision?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know.’

‘There’s an awful lot of not knowing about,’ I said.

The twins retreated to the floor and began to wrestle like puppies, my return having made them feel safe enough to lapse into boisterousness. Even so, now and then one or the other would bound up and touch base with my arm, knee or face.

I fought not to panic. I fought not to hate Nathan for leaving me in the lurch. I fought to reclaim the clear, hard sight of my former life that would urge me to ring up an agency first thing in the morning and employ anyone who was available.

The boys’ noise level rose. ‘Mum!’ Lucas shrieked, and I found myself warding off a serious head-butt.

‘You mustn’t do that, Lucas, you might hurt someone.’

I wasn’t sure I could dump them on a strange agency person.

‘Mum,’ said Lucas, ‘Dad says…’

There was a sudden wrenching hush. I knelt down and drew my boys close. Their heads nestled into my shoulders, and their little bodies sank against mine. I murmured, ‘Yes, Lukey. What did Dad say?’

A strange agency person might take against Lucas’s head-butting or Felix’s silences. An agency person might handle them roughly, or feed them eggs, which they hated. An agency person wouldn’t understand that they ached for their father.

‘Dad says…’ echoed Felix, the eyelashes round his big eyes resembling wet feathers. I looked into their blue depths, which seemed to contain so much more knowledge than his years allowed. I turned to Lucas. ‘What does Dad say?’

Lucas stared at me blankly. Then he shook his head. ‘Dunno,’ he muttered, and launched himself across me to hit Felix. There was a shriek as Felix was felled.

I allowed them to fight. Fighting gave them relief, the consolation of thumps, and I looked at the clock on the wall. Never had the numerals on it appeared so black and precisely etched. Sunday… Sunday… Time was running out.

My mind clicked into overdrive. One scenario in particular sounded a reveille to the black feelings.

‘Sorry,’ Barry would say, when I rang in to tell him I couldn’t make the meeting on Monday. ‘I’m not sure this arrangement is working.’ I pictured him spreading his hands, the wristbands rippling. ‘We need someone we can rely on, Minty. It doesn’t look like you at the moment.’

The mark of a civilized man – the civilized woman not being included – is to be able to hold contrary propositions in the head at the same time. Nathan… was dead. His children lived.

An idea took shape. Listen, it insisted, as I dismissed it. I spread my hand and studied the fingers. Think about it.

The decibels ascended to a dangerous level and I set about prising the boys apart. Felix rolled over and bit my hand hard. I snatched it back. ‘Don’t do that.’ He stiffened and rolled away. I crouched beside him. ‘Felix, you never, never bite people. Have you listened to Mummy? I’m trying to teach you something important.’

There are many ways in which to tackle survival. ‘We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence,’ Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species.

Once, after we had been married for a little while, in the middle of making frantic love, Nathan halted. ‘I have never desired anyone like I desire you, Minty,’ he confessed, in a thrillingly passionate way. He did not say, ‘I have never loved anyone like I love you,’ as he had once before. I had noted the omission but concluded that desire would do fine.

It had and it hadn’t. Desire was good and it got us through some bumpy times. The absence of mutual love was another matter – and I chose to ignore it.

Again, I picked up the phone and, with a tearful Felix clinging to my legs, dialled the innocent configuration of numbers. It was answered quickly.

‘Is that Rose?’

‘Minty.’

‘I know I’m disturbing you…’ The pause confirmed this diagnosis. ‘I want to ask… I have to ask you a favour.’ Rose wasn’t going to help me and another long pause ensued. ‘Please…’ The word hurt, and I felt a flush creep up my cheeks.

‘I’m not sure, Minty. What is it?’

‘You have no reason to help me. Except for the boys. There’s a problem.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because Nathan thought you should be involved. I’m doing what he… suggested.’

‘The boys,’ she cut in. ‘Are they OK? Are they ill?’

Confession of my predicament punctured the angry boil. I found myself sobbing hysterically down the phone. ‘I need someone to look after them tomorrow. I can’t miss work, and Eve’s ill in hospital. After tomorrow I can arrange cover.’

Sam delivered Rose to the doorstep of number seven at eight o’clock precisely. ‘He was staying with me, and gave me a lift,’ she said.

Sam hovered on the doorstep. ‘Hello, Minty. I can’t stop.’

‘Congratulations again on the job,’ I had the presence of mind to say.

He frowned. ‘Bit of a poisoned chalice,’ he said. ‘I’m up here to sort out the final details.’

‘Has Jilly decided to go with you?’

‘I’m working on it.’

I remembered Poppy’s request. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Actually, no. We’ll sort something out.’ He smiled to take away the sting. ‘Nice of you to offer.’

The ranks had been closed and I took the hint. I didn’t feel I could do or say any more – which constituted a tick for Failure and a cross for Endeavour. Sam said goodbye and I led Rose into the house.

She followed me into the kitchen, placed her handbag on the table. She was dressed in jeans, a skinny T-shirt and a black cardigan that made her arms appear even more slender than they were. ‘I’m not sure what to say, Minty. I’m not sure why I’m here.’ She had her back to me. ‘But I think I’m doing this for Nathan.’

The boys were summoned from their bedroom, which they were in the process of dismantling. Lucas was wearing his green trousers, and Felix his blue socks. ‘Boys. You remember Mrs Lloyd.’

‘Rose.’ She held out a hand. ‘Hello, Lucas? Good, I guessed right this time. Hello, Felix.’

A burst of wind rattled the cat-flap. Clunk. It was, as always, an eerie sound. A shadow passed over Rose’s face.

‘That’s the cat’s door,’ said Felix.

‘Do you have a cat?’ asked Rose.

‘Mummy says no.’

The twins maintained their distance and confined themselves to scrutinizing her. They conveyed boredom, rejection and more than a little weariness. ‘This is Sam and Poppy’s mummy,’ I explained. ‘She’s going to look after you today. You remember she knew Daddy’

Felix hunched his shoulders. ‘Why can’t you look after us, Mummy?’

‘Because I have to work. Otherwise the office will not be pleased with me.’

‘He sounds just like Sam,’ said Rose.

Again, the rattle of the cat-flap. It reminded me of the ordinariness of life, the inexorability of each day with its small routines. Rose had declared how wonderful and diverse she had discovered the world to be. For me it was different. The click-clack of the redundant cat-flap only anchored me to the shifting, echoing landscape of loss, calamity and grief through which I was journeying.

Rose busied herself with her bag. ‘I imagine I was the last resort?’

‘If I’m absolutely truthful, yes.’

That made her smile, and the atmosphere lightened. ‘You must have hated ringing me.’

Yes. And if you’re truthful, you hated coming here.’

‘Well, that’s clear, then.’ She produced a packet of coloured marker pens and two pads of paper from her bag. ‘Felix and Lucas, shall we see who can draw the best cat? Then I’ll take you to school.’

Felix had been busy working things out. ‘You’re Poppy’s mummy? Like Mummy is our mummy?’

Rose nodded. ‘Exactly the same.’

Lucas seized a pad and a green pen. Felix held back. ‘These are my blue socks,’ he informed Rose, and stuck out a leg. ‘Daddy liked them.’

Rose looked steadily at the sock, and the small foot inside it, and tears spilt down her cheeks.

I turned away.

Before I left the house, I glanced into the kitchen. Rose was leaning against the table, one leg swinging, and the twins were drawing. Rose was saying, ‘Did you know that your daddy loved swimming? Once he swam so far out to sea that we had to go and get the boat to rescue him.’

In a manner of speaking, I was gazing into the heart of my darkness, however brightly lit it was.

‘Goodbye, boys,’ I hitched my bag on to my shoulders. ‘Be good.’

They barely glanced up. ‘’Bye, Mummy.’

At six o’clock on the dot I let myself noiselessly into the house. Rose was ensconced with a boy at each side on the sofa in the sitting room. She had her arms round them. ‘Then your daddy got hold of the fishing-line and pulled. He pulled and pulled…’

So intent were all three that they did not hear me come in. Rose lifted a hand and absently stroked Felix’s hair. He snuggled further into her.

‘Do you know what was on that fishing-line?’

‘The biggest fish.’ Lucas held up his hands. ‘As big as this?’

‘No.’

‘A dead man?’ Felix’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘No.’

‘A whale?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Rose. ‘It was a suitcase with “R. Pearson” painted on it. Inside it there were tins and tins of peas.’

I scuffed a foot on the carpet and Rose turned. Our eyes locked and her arms tightened round the twins. ‘Look who’s here!’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s your mummy.’

Rose stood in the hall with her bag over her shoulder. ‘Goodbye, boys. See you soon.’ She handed over the front-door key. ‘They were no trouble.’

One thing was absolutely settled with regard to the situation between Rose and me. I was in the wrong, the black-hearted villain of the piece, and Rose was the person to whom wrong had been done, which left me – if one accepted the determinist argument – free to continue to err. ‘Nathan loved you,’ I said. ‘He always did.’

Suddenly Rose laughed. ‘Oh, my God, the tables have turned.’ She choked a little. ‘Don’t you see how funny it is?’ She held out a hand, a wooing gesture. ‘Don’t you?’

I could not bring myself to take her hand. ‘I’ll work on it.’

Rose sobered up, and her face now registered sadness and regret. ‘I think Nathan did love me, despite everything.’

‘But you,’ I pushed it further, ‘did you…’

Rose moved towards the door. ‘I’ve done you a favour today, Minty. Let’s leave it at that.’ She placed a hand on the catch. ‘For the record Nathan, having done it once, would never have left the twins. And he would never have regretted having them. Ever.’

‘That wasn’t my question.’

‘But it’s my answer,’ she said gently. She tugged at the door latch.

‘Here, let me,’ I pulled the handle. ‘The lock’s tricky.’

‘Oh, I know that,’ said Rose. ‘It always was.’