The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

3

At nine fifteen precisely, hair brushing cleanly across my cheeks and smelling of almond shampoo, I walked up Shepherds Bush Road, past two pubs – hitherto unreconstructed and raucous – that had catered for the Irish and were now undergoing rebirth as gastropubs, then past the recently repaved green. ‘The Bush is the new Gate,’ read the graffito on a brick wall.

Once upon a time the old United Kingdom Provincial Insurance building had been what its name suggested. These days, United Kingdom Provincial Insurance operated entirely from Bombay and the building was home to seven start-up enterprises. They shared a reception desk, coffee facilities and conversations, conducted on the stairwells, which centred chiefly on the inequities of the rent.

Some things are eternal but not, as I have discovered, the obvious candidates. The stained nylon carpets and the smell of plastic and paper in offices never change. Yet I had never been so glad to inhale a deep, plastic-filled breath as I was when I returned to work after three years at home with the twins. It notched up my pulse rate from lacklustre to viable. Nathan’s response to my exhilaration, I remember, had been a little sour. The office – he stabbed the air to emphasize the point – isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For all the fuss he made, you might have concluded that I, not he, worked from eight until eight five days a week, rather than the three days on which I had compromised.

Paradox Pictures was one of the numerous small independent television production companies clustering in Shepherds Bush. ‘Dirt cheap rents and easy access to the Beeb and Channel 4,’ confided Barry, chief executive and executive producer, when he interviewed me over lunch at Balzac’s. (In the letter that accompanied my CV, I pointed out that we had both taken degrees at Leeds University, a sliver of research that had probably earned me the interview.) He cast an eye round the crowded restaurant. ‘I’d say most of the Beeb are here at the trough right now. I got the sack for being a naughty boy.’ His lived-in features slackened with nostalgia. ‘She was very beautiful. Anyway, Auntie and the then Mrs Helm took a dim view, and I had to take off to the States for a time where I made Spouse Exchange. When I came back there had been the Thatcherite decree that the BBC was to use independents. I met Lucy. So here we are.’ He held up both hands, palms towards me. ‘No longer a naughty boy.’

There was a pause while we drank the wine and mourned the death of naughty boys and, by implication, naughty girls. Then Barry came to the point. ‘I need ideas. The more bizarre the better. We need to reach into a younger audience. We need to think interactive. I need someone who knows people, who has a hinterland.’

I liked the idea that I might possess a fertile hinterland. ‘My husband,’ I told him, ‘is chief executive of Vistemax. We entertain all the time.’

That did the trick too.

So, three days a week, I schmoozed with journalists, authors and agents, kept tabs on anniversaries and big public events. I watched television, listened to radio, read books, magazines and newspapers. I learnt rapidly that, far from being scarce, ideas were ten a penny but their implementation was a different matter. Ideas fluttered round the office but few, so few, soared.

Now, when anyone asked what I did, I replied, ‘I’m a deputy development producer with Paradox Pictures,’ which took a little time to articulate but was all the better for that. Certainly, it took longer to say than ‘I’m at home with twins.’

‘Morning,’ said Syriol, the receptionist, who spoke four languages and was studiedly casual in Sass & Bide jeans with striped plimsolls. She was eating a bowl of granola with one hand and sorting the post with other. The script she was trying to write in her spare time was flickering on her screen. Thriftily, she had based it on life in a television company.

‘Morning,’ I echoed, picked up the stack of newspapers and headed for my office where I dumped them to read later.

On Friday we had the weekly ideas meeting and, armed with a file, I took myself off to the meeting room. It was an oblong box, with natural light and a coffee-machine. It emitted a smell that scraped the back of my throat. Barry was already in situ wearing a white linen suit with a black shirt, which suggested he was in an executive frame of mind. Deb, the current development producer, in combat trousers and a denim jacket, was logging his every move.

‘You seem a bit pale.’ Barry had looked up from the enormous Filofax he preferred to an electronic diary. He complained that it was so heavy it gave him tennis elbow, but he couldn’t help it if he was an old-fashioned bloke at heart.

I took the chair next to Deb. ‘It’s the excitement.’

Barry grinned at me over Deb’s head. As a boss, he was tough but nice, the sort of person who did not allow everyday exasperations to get to him. ‘She gives a cracking dinner party. She’s a wife and mother. She looks good. For God’s sake, she reads.’

From this I deduced that Barry had gained something at our table. Yet there was the tiniest suggestion of a bared fang buried in the praise. Barry expected his employees to give their pound of flesh.

‘Easy when you know how, Barry. Ask Lucy,’ I said, cucumber cool.

The first idea came from a book, Vanishing Rural Crafts. ‘It would make a series.’ (Plus point: more money could be squeezed out of the television companies for a series than a one-off.) ‘It would be a valuable social document with archive footage.’ (Minus point: if it includes black and white film, it’s likely to end up in a late-night slot.) I cited an example of a rush-basket business on the Somerset Levels. For generations the Bruton family had passed on their expertise from son to son (NB no daughters). A Bruton basket lasted a lifetime, which might have been a self-limiting market but for the success of their increasingly popular willow coffins. The quote from John Bruton was lovely: ‘My job is my life. The two are bound together. Like this landscape, and the water that makes the willows grow.’ I had scribbled in the margin a potential title: From the Cradle to the Grave.

Barry did not take the bait. ‘Sounds a bit regionaltelly. You might get some local funding but no foreign deals. Pass. Anything else?’

‘Women Between the Wars: A Lost Generation’. The homework had produced: ‘In 1921, there were 19,803,022 females in England and Wales, 9.5 million of child-bearing age. There were 18,082,220 men, of whom fewer than 8.5 million were of marrying age. Thus, the women were not so much lost as surplus to requirements, which resulted in depression, low self-esteem, poverty and emigration.’ I looked at Barry. ‘It was a terrible collective experience of loss. Loss of expectation and ideals, not to mention a comfortable future.’

Barry shrugged. ‘Maybe. Who are you targeting?’

‘Ben Pryce at History is planning a two-week season around the First World War. He says he’s run out of Nazi stories and needs material. But the main target must be Channel 4.’

Barry gestured at Deb. ‘Pour us a coffee.’

I knew then that it was a non-runner, but I ploughed on: ‘One of these women, a Maud Watson, set up the Feline Rescue Association.’ I read out a quote from Maud: ‘“I was an old maid and a useless one for I could never have been a doctor or a lawyer. Men were stupid enough to kill themselves on the battlefield and I couldn’t stop them, but I could save cats…”’ Mistake. I should have been talking about a signature director, foreign sales and hourly rates. I should have been talking lunch.

Barry stirred the tar-like coffee. ‘Half of today’s audience won’t have heard of the First World War.’ He exchanged a glance with Deb, which excluded me.

Barry’s assistant, Gabrielle, appeared in the doorway. Her Lycra top strained over her breasts and the waistband of her jeans marched across the dangerous area between her belly button and her groin. ‘Barry, chop-chop.’

Gabrielle bit a glossy lip, her teeth nesting on the pink platform, and looked important. ‘The meeting,’ she explained, to the now five-year-old Barry. ‘With Controller Two. You’re due at the restaurant in five minutes.’

‘I’d forgotten.’ Barry jack-knifed to his feet. ‘Deb, I’ll hear what you have to say this afternoon.’

And that was that.

Deb swept up the plastic cups, dumped them in the bin and rubbed a tissue over the table top. ‘No green lights today. We’d better have a chat, Minty. Tomorrow.’ She checked herself. ‘Oh, but you’re not here tomorrow, are you? You won’t be in till next week.’ Her expression was quite nasty and she had scrubbed so hard that the table was dotted with balls of wet tissue.

‘So…’ Gisela arched her eyebrows ‘… Rose and Nathan are in touch.’ She was giving me lunch at the Café Noir as a thank-you for dinner. We had talked long and hard, which had given birth to confidences I had not intended: I had found myself explaining to Gisela how I had discovered that Rose and Nathan were in contact. Gisela’s eyes sparkled. ‘Did you read the diary?’

I owed Nathan some loyalty. ‘No.’

Gisela did not believe me. ‘Have you talked to him about Rose?’

It had been a relief to confide in her. ‘No, but I will.’ I reached for my water, so stuffed with ice that I had difficulty drinking it. ‘It’s complicated. Nathan and I haven’t got to the stage where we’re each other’s best friend. Perhaps that’s where Rose fits in.’

‘Perhaps not.’ Gisela had sounded a warning note. ‘Perhaps not, Minty.’

The ice clinked against my teeth and sent an unpleasant frisson through the enamel. ‘Technically, can you commit adultery with an ex-spouse?’

‘You think it’s like that?’

‘No,’ I said quickly. I changed the subject: ‘I’m thinking of going back to work full-time.’ I recollected Deb’s nasty look. ‘There are tensions when you work part-time, and I never feel I’m giving it my full attention.’

‘I admire you for working in an office. I could never do it – have never done it.’

‘You entertain, run the houses. Not hard work? I think it is.’

Gisela spread out her hand, nails sculpted and polished, skin creamed. ‘Remember, I have time to concentrate on one thing. I don’t have children or a job, so I can give my all to the husband of the day. Nice. And simple.’ She closed her eyes briefly. ‘But tiring, from time to time.’

Her mobile shrilled. Gisela gestured towards it apologetically. ‘Do you mind? It’ll be Roger. He likes to check up on arrangements at about this time.’ No one could accuse Gisela of shirking her duties as she ran through Roger’s schedule. ‘Meeting at two thirty tomorrow. Three thirty-five, you’re seeing Mr Evans in Harley Street. Remember Annabel’s birthday… And, Roger, the guests are arriving at seven o’clock sharp.’ There was more in this vein, so much so that I had finished my apricot and arugula salad by the end of the call. ‘Minty, I’m sorry. Such bad manners, but if I’m not on tap for Roger he gets into a state.’ She did not, I noticed, turn off the phone.

I twirled my water glass. ‘Can I ask you something? How did you cope with Richmond’s first wife?’

‘Ah.’ Gisela tapped my hand. ‘I didn’t think about her. That was the trick. There’s no safety in thinking. If one harps on about all the questionable things that one does, and I acknowledge that I do them, then one’s at a disadvantage. Her name was Myra and she rescued Richmond when he was down on his luck, and they built up the business together. But she made a mistake. She forgot to treat him as a husband. So…’ Gisela looked thoughtful ‘… it was simple for me.’ After a moment, she added, ‘Richmond wanted me, elderly as he was. So you see – ‘

The phone rang again. Gisela answered it. ‘Roger,’ she sounded sharp, ‘I am having lunch.’ To my astonishment, colour flamed into her cheeks. ‘Marcus? Where are you? No. Not tonight. I’m entertaining.’ She swivelled away from me. ‘I’m having lunch with a friend. No. Yes. Soon.’

Now she did switch off the phone. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ The colour still danced in her cheeks and she made a show of dabbing her mouth with her napkin, then an eye. ‘Mascara,’ she declared, and consulted her handbag mirror.

‘Is everything all right?’ I watched her smooth a tiny line at the corner of her eye. ‘Is Marcus one of the hostile family?’

‘Marcus…’ Gisela dropped the mirror back into her bag. She fixed her eyes on me, evidently making some kind of calculation. ‘I’ve known Marcus all my life. He sort of… fits in between my marriages. Some people do, you know. You can’t get rid of them.’

‘Between marriages? Are you…?’

She played with the diamond on her left hand. ‘No. But there’s work and there’s play. Tonight at the dinner Roger and I will give, there’s a good chance that I’ll be a little bored by the person sitting next to me. But I will not suggest it by so much as a flicker, and I will make that person feel good about themselves, and it will benefit Roger.’ The coffee had arrived and she glanced down at it. ‘I never confuse work and play.’

Gisela had been exceptionally indiscreet and I was curious to know why. Across the table, I observed the expertly tinted lids mask the knowing eyes and the equation was solved. It was simple, even for one whose mathematical skill was limited. Gisela knew perfectly well that her secret was safe with me because her husband was my husband’s boss.

By mutual consent we moved on to safer subjects – the Gard house in France, Roger’s clutch of directorships and the rumour that Vistemax was being eyed by a German conglomerate. The Chelsea house was in the process of redecoration, and Gisela was fretting over the colour schemes. ‘Did I tell you that Maddy Kington, who’s advising me, has run off with the builder on the last house she worked on? She’s now living in a bungalow in Reading. A case of l’amour du cottage. What do you think the cottage is like?’

I returned to the office knowing that, under Gisela’s Chloé suit and the matching Bulgari jewellery, the woman had worked out to the last flutter of those mascaraed eyelashes what was necessary for her survival.

I let myself in at the front door of number seven and braced myself.

Sure enough, Lucas appeared at the top of the stairs, half in and half out of his trousers. I put down my bag, and went up as he launched himself at me. I picked him up and carried him into the bedroom where Eve was battling for supremacy with Felix. Lucas nuzzled my neck, damp little lips nibbling. Then he wriggled down and dived towards Eve, who seized the moment to haul off his trousers.

A fully dressed Felix was standing by the window that overlooked the street. He turned round. ‘Mummy, there’s a poor cat out there. I think he wants a home.’

I went over to inspect the scene. ‘That’s not a poor cat, Felix. That’s Tigger. He belongs to the Blakes, you know that.’

‘But he looks lost.’ For some time now, Felix had been begging for a kitten. ‘If he was lost and came here, Mum, he’d sit on your knee. You’d like that and he could go out of his special door.’

I stroked the thin little shoulders. ‘I don’t like cats, Felix.’

He fixed a bright blue gaze on me. ‘Daddy says we can have one.’

‘Did he? When?’

‘Last night.’

‘You were asleep when Daddy came home last night.’

Felix discovered that discretion was the better part of valour. He dropped his trousers and stepped out of them. ‘It seemed like last night.’

I sighed.

Half an hour later, they were settled on either side of me as I read their bedtime story. ‘“Once upon a time, there was a big jungle where it was very hot…”’ Felix’s thumb had sneaked into his mouth and I removed it. The illustrator had gone to town. There were scarlet and blue parrots, and pale beige monkeys in the trees. On the ground, he had drawn in a scurry of ants, an anteater with a long, businesslike snout and, tucked into the left-hand corner, the sinister coils of a boa constrictor.

Lucas pointed to a monkey. ‘His eyes are as big as yours, Mummy.’

‘“The ants were very good at keeping house,”’ I read. ‘“But along came the anteater and ate them all up.”’ The illustrator provided graphic detail and the boys shrieked. ‘“Afterwards he became very sleepy, and forgot to look round.”’

‘Ohhhh…’ said Felix. ‘The snake’s squeezing him.’

Downstairs the front door opened and shut. Nathan’s briefcase hit the hall floor with a clunk. Eve ran up to her bedroom and, presently, the sound of rock music floated down.

On the final page, there was a swoop of striped fur and a glint of bared fangs as the tiger leapt on to the snake.

‘Mummy,’ asked Felix, ‘does everybody always eat everybody else?’

‘Yes.’ Lucas bared his teeth. ‘Like this.’ He sank his teeth into his brother’s arm.

Nathan arrived in the mêlée and roared for order. I fled downstairs where I took a ready-made dish of chicken breasts and mushrooms from the fridge, shoved it into the oven and set the timer. Eve had done the laundry so I picked up the basket and took it upstairs to the landing where I had set up the ironing-board.

Unless Eve stepped in, Nathan did his own shirts and was frequently sighted on the landing. He had burnt himself once, come to find me and held out a hand on which a red strip glowed. ‘What do I do?’

I held his hand under cold water, made him a cup of tea and asked every hour or so if he was feeling better. For days afterwards, I caught him examining it, and eavesdropped on his phone conversation to Poppy: ‘It could have been very nasty.’ In due course, the scab fell away leaving a scimitar-shaped scar. ‘Poppy tells me,’ Nathan was pleased with the information, ‘that this kind of burn is listed in medical textbooks as “Housewife’s Syndrome”.’

I scrutinized my unscarred wrists. ‘What does that make you, Nathan?’

‘Experienced at ironing,’ he replied evenly.

I returned downstairs. Nathan was not in the study, so I went into the sitting room. He had drawn up a chair by the french windows and was staring out into the darkness towards the lilac tree. He was quite, quite still.

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. In the kitchen, the timer shrilled. I took a step into the room. ‘Nathan?’

He sighed, stirred. ‘Yes?’ He looked at me. ‘What do you want?’

After supper Nathan rolled up his shirtsleeves and tackled the glasses that were too delicate for the dishwasher. It was late, the heating had gone off and gooseflesh colonized my arms.

Nathan worked in his usual methodical way, running fresh hot water into each glass and setting it on the draining-board. I tipped the hot water into the sink, rubbed them with a cloth and placed them on a tray.

‘Nathan, what would you say if I went back to work full-time?’

‘That again,’ said Nathan.

‘That again,’ I echoed.

Years ago Timon, my boss, had called me into his office at Vistemax. On the door, a plaque read Editor, Weekend Digest I remember in particular the emphatic curve of the ‘D’. Timon, who modelled himself on Gordon Gekko, was in a pinstriped suit and braces. ‘Look, we want you to take over from Rose.’ He had never bothered much with preliminaries.

My skirt was short, the skin of my legs was buffed and polished. My heels were high, my hair lustrous with youth. With the aid of kohl and grey eye-shadow, my eyes were darkly inviting. I had dreams of domination – not the sexual kind, but of being able to manage my life effortlessly. ‘Are you sacking Rose, Timon?’

He sent me his best Gekko look. ‘You know perfectly well that that’s what you’ve been angling for.’

The previous evening, Nathan had slipped into my bed, shuddering with emotion. He had left Rose. At that point he had had no intention of marrying me, but he craved the transcendence of the love affair. He gazed so deeply into my eyes that he was in danger of X-raying my skull, and I grew uncomfortable with the intensity. Nathan was funny, tender and much more polite than I had been used to in my lovers. ‘Do you mind?’ ‘May I?’ As we moved this way and that on my cheap, inadequate double bed, sealing his arrival, I told myself that Rose had not deserved to keep him.

Timon drew a perfect circle on his notepad. ‘Six months’ probation. Yes or no?’

‘Yes.’

I quit his office high-wired with nerves and exhilaration. Abraham Maslow had been correct when he drew up his pyramid and formulated an individual’s hierarchy of need: when food, warmth, safety and sex had been seen to, it was vital to have the respect of colleagues. And respect for oneself, of course.

Six months later, I received one of those letters: Tour probationary period has now run to its close. While we have appreciated your efforts on the Books Pages, we have decided not to appoint you. Perhaps you will consider the alternatives… etc’

This time Timon didn’t bother to call me into the office.

It took me a while to decide where to file this record of my failure. Eventually, I slotted it into ‘Family History’ in Nathan’s immaculate files, fitting it between – chronologically – the photographs of Poppy’s surprise wedding in Thailand, and the christening of Jilly and Sam’s Frieda. Nathan demanded to know why I had put it there, and I told him there was no point in not facing up to the fact that I’d been sacked. He lost his temper, cursed Vistemax and raged round the room. I watched him, my heart galloping under my pregnant bump. For Nathan, life was no longer obedient and tidy, and his family had lost its shape. I knew then that his regrets were for the loss of symmetry as much as his guilt at having cut it into bits.

Nathan placed the penultimate glass on the draining-board. Foam flecked his forearms, and his fingers were rosy. ‘Your timing, Minty. It’s late.’ Pause. ‘Why?’

Again, I recollected Deb’s nasty expression. ‘I don’t think part-time works.’

He pulled out the plug. The greasy water churned away. ‘I know it doesn’t, but the boys need you. It seems to me that you have a good balance with what you’ve got.’

‘I need to work and I think I’d do better at Paradox if I was full-time.’

He nodded, and wiped down the draining-board with a cloth. ‘You see that as your priority?’

‘I do. It’ll be OK, Nathan, I promise. It’s not so difficult. Hundreds of women do it.’ I slid my arms round his waist and made him turn to face me. ‘Surely you’re not surprised?’

‘No.’ He moved out of my reach. ‘I had an idea you might be thinking along those lines.’

Why hadn’t he said something? ‘Don’t make me sound like a monster who abandons her children. I need to do something properly. You do see?’ I thought of the ideas landing in my lap. I would nurture them, make them grow and watch them fly.

‘Don’t you put your heart and soul into your sons?’ Nathan gave me a long, slow appraisal, in which all our differences were reflected. ‘I’m tired.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

I tried to read beyond the set look on his face. What could I say to dissolve them? Somewhere – and I could put my finger on it – I had lost my hold on the essential Nathan, the one who had tumbled so willingly into my grasp.

I turned off the lights one by one, and the kitchen slid into darkness. ‘I’ve decided, Nathan.’

‘Well, then,’ he said, from the doorway, ‘you’ve decided.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I said. ‘Don’t make it sound as if I plan to murder you all.’

With that he swung back to me. ‘And you,’ his anger broke through the fatigue, ‘are never satisfied.’ He checked himself and when he spoke again it was with a low, wooing voice. ‘Minty, why can’t you just get on with what we’ve got? It’s good enough, isn’t it?’ He pulled me to him and buried his face in my hair. ‘Let’s not quarrel over this.’

Quarrelling spelt another sleepless night. It meant what the self-help manuals called ‘a session to settle the issues’. It meant the whole question of my work spiralling from a minor problem into a nuclear disaster. I kissed Nathan’s cheek. ‘Let’s not.’