Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman Page 2

  *

  On my way home, I slipped into St Benedicta’s. I felt in need of peace, a moment of stillness.

  It was a modern, unremarkable church, with no pretensions to elegance or architectural excitement. The original St Benedicta’s had been blown up in an IRA terrorist campaign thirty years ago. Its replacement was as downbeat and inexpensive as a place of worship should be in an age that was uneasy about where the Church fitted.

  As usual, on the table by the glass entrance doors, there was a muddle of hymn books and pamphlets, the majority advertising services that had taken place the previous week. A lingering trace of incense mixed with the smell of orange squash, which came from an industrial-sized bottle stored in the corner – presumably kept for Sunday school. The pews were sensible but someone, or several people, had embroidered kneelers that were a riot of colour and pattern. I often wondered who they were, the anonymous needlewomen, and what had driven them to harness the reds, blues, circles and swirls. Relief from a drab existence? A sense of order in transferring the symbols of an old and powerful legend on to canvas?

  St Benedicta’s was not my church, and I was not even religious, but I was drawn to it, not only when I was troubled but when I was happy too. Here it was possible to slip out from under the skin of oneself, breathe in and relish a second or two of being no one in particular.

  I walked down the central aisle and turned left into the tiny Lady Chapel where a statue of the Madonna with an unusually deep blue cloak had been placed beside the altar. She was a rough, crude creation, but oddly touching. Her too-pink plaster hands were raised in blessing over a circular candle-stand in which a solitary candle burned. A madonna with a special dedication to the victims of violence, those plaster hands embraced the maimed and wounded in Ireland and Rwanda, the lost souls of South America and those we know nothing about, and reminded us that she was the mother of all mothers, whose duty was to protect and tend.

  Sometimes I sat in front of her and experienced the content and peace of a settled woman. But at other times I wondered if being settled and peaceful had been bought at the price of smugness.

  Fresh candles were stacked on a tray nearby. I dropped a couple of pounds into the box and extracted three from the pile. One for the children and Nathan, one for Ianthe, one to keep the house – our house - warm, filled, and our place of our refuge.

  I picked up my book bag, had a second thought, put it down again and hunted in my purse for another pound. The fourth candle was for the erring minister’s wife, and my dulled conscience.

  On the way out, I stopped and tidied the pamphlets on the table.

  Even though it was dark, I continued home by the park, prudently choosing the path that ran alongside the river.

  Nobody could argue that it was anything but a city park, ringed as it was by traffic, pockmarked with patches of mud and dispirited trees, but I liked its determination to provide a breathing space. Anyway, if you took the trouble to look, it contained all sorts of unobtrusive delights. A tiny corona of snowdrops under a tree, offering cheer in the depths of winter. A flying spark of a robin redbreast spotted by the dank holly bushes. Rows of tulips in spring, with tufts of primula and primrose garnishing their bases.

  So far, winter had been a mild, dampish interlude. Earlier in the day, there had been half-hearted spatters of rain but now it was almost warm. It was too early to be sure, only February, but there was a definite promise of spring shaping up, things growing. I stopped to shift my book bag from one shoulder to the other, feeling the stretch and exhilaration of my life pulse through me.

  I was late. I must hurry. I must always hurry.

  Five minutes later, I walked up the tiled front path of number seven Lakey Street. Twenty years ago, Nathan and I had talked of restoring a silk-weaver’s house in Spitalfields, or discovering the perfect-priced Georgian family house on four floors, which – unaccountably – no one else had spotted. Lakey Street fitted between our small flat in Hackney and any wilder speculations. One day, we promised ourselves, we would upgrade, but we settled promptly into the Victorian terrace that comfortably encompassed our family and forgot about doing any such thing.

  The street-lights were lit, and the fresh white paint on the window-frames was washed with a neon tint. The bay tree dripped on to me as I passed and, for the thousandth time, I told myself it was far too big, planted in the wrong place, and would have to go. For the thousandth time, I reprieved it.

  Chapter Two

  Six hours later we were in bed, and Nathan laid his hand on my breast in the old familiar way. There was no trouble and no barrier. It was as easy as silk sliding over silk, and I wrapped my arms and legs around him and drew him down. Afterwards, he murmured, ‘That was nice,’ and drifted into sleep.

  I should have dropped off too, for we had been out late at a company dinner, but I was too tired for sleep – a hangover from the days of having small children. Recollections of the evening threaded through my mind, cobwebby, not important, but there.

  ‘The works,’ Nathan had ordered, as he plunged barelegged around the bedroom in his socks. He gave off an air of I-have-too-much-to-think-about, and I fetched his shirt for him. ‘Best bib, Rosie, and glam. Otherwise these damn politicians think that all we’re capable of is rolled-up sleeves and eyeshades.’

  Occasionally, Nathan’s fixed ambition nettled me: it was so set, so immutable, so… predictable, and I had lived with it for a long time. Selling your soul was one thing; having the greater portion of your home life dictated by a newspaper was another. Then I reminded myself that, in my own way, I was as committed to my job, and the irritation never lasted long. I helped him on with the shirt and did up the top button. ‘Darling, that’s only in Hollywood.’

  Only Nathan called me Rosie – I would not allow anyone else to muddle around with diminutives. ‘That’s because roses are too beautiful and important,’ Ianthe had once told me. ‘Roses are the only flowers that have never had a nickname. No heart’s-ease or Dutchman’s breeches for the rose.’ She was holding me tight after an adolescent wobble in confidence. ‘Roses rustle in the wind and smell of heaven. They are tokens of love, as well as grief. Think of that.’ Goodness knows what she based this on, but her words flowed through me, gelled, and prescribed the manner in which I perceived my name and, I suppose, myself.

  Nathan was different. He could call me what he wished.

  I had put on a sleeveless black sheath, which was a little too tight, and high heels. My hair needed cutting but I had had no time recently to get to the hairdresser so I bundled it up into a chignon – not the most flattering style but it would do.

  With Nathan’s hand tucked under my elbow, we walked into the smart restaurant, the kind featured in magazines that existed to make their readers miserable because their own lives were so far removed from the fantasies on the pages. It was awash with silver and glass and exquisitely coloured blush ranunculus in white vases.

  Peter Shaker and his wife Carolyne were already there with a young rising star called George from the financial department and his pregnant wife, Jackie, who both looked nervous. They were hammering into the champagne. Although we were not intimates, we knew Peter and Carolyne quite well: Carolyne was also in a black shift and high heels, but she is tiny and dark while I am tall with chestnut hair so the effect was different.

  Carolyne kissed me, more or less affectionately. Over the years we had seen a lot of each other at company dos, but that was all. In the beginning Carolyne, who did not have a job and was an über-wife, asked me to accompany her to several afternoon charity functions, which I always had to decline, and therefore, too, the possibility of friendship. Since then, whenever we met, I could not help feeling that Carolyne, whose home was immaculate, whose two daughters won scholarships to their secondary schools and made their own clothes, was making a point about our respective choices. In the nicest possible way, of course. She was, she implied, a Good Wife. Women are as competitive as men but their subversions are better
hidden and sometimes their competitiveness is, curiously, a sign of affection.

  While we waited for our guests – a couple of politicians and Monty Chavet, an author who specialized in insider exposés of Westminster – we drank more champagne and exchanged company gossip.

  ‘Have you seen this week’s figures, Nathan?’ inquired Peter. He stood boldly in front of Nathan, legs a little akimbo. When he was younger, Peter had been painfully thin but, with the growth in his confidence, he had put on weight, which suited him.

  Nathan frowned. ‘We’ll have to talk about last week’s dip -’

  Before the numbers game could begin in earnest, the other guests arrived and I found myself sitting next to a junior health minister, whose name was Neil Skinner. He was pale-skinned and red-haired, with the sort of lips that cracked easily in the cold, which could not have been good for winter television appearances. I found myself pitying him: his ambitions were so transparent, and health such a difficult portfolio – only for political suicides. We plodded through the highways and byways of his career, and then he asked, ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m the books editor for the weekend Digest.’ Oh, books, said people I met at social events, you’re so lucky. Have you met Salman Rushdie?

  ‘And a very good one,’ Monty cut in. He was talking to Carolyne but listening to our conversation at the same time. It was how he found his material, he had once told me. ‘Best pages in town.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Neil Skinner frowned, ‘you must think I’m very stupid.’

  My lips twitched and I wondered who suffered from the worst inferiority complex: the politician or the journalist? Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Nathan being his most charming with the second and more senior politician who, rumour had it, might make the cabinet in the next reshuffle. As usual, he was utterly focused and alert. ‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘Why would I?’

  Neil tapped his glass with a finger that I could swear had been professionally manicured. ‘Isn’t it difficult working for an outfit that can do such damage to people?’

  I looked into the pale eyes and replied truthfully. ‘Sometimes.’

  He leant forward and refilled my glass. ‘But you do it?’

  ‘Yes, but I believe in my bit and I think you have to hang on to that.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we have something in common.’

  *

  A sixth sense told me now that Nathan was not asleep, he was too still, and I flipped over to face him. He was lying stiff and straight under the duvet, not in his usual akimbo style. I laid my palm on his chest. ‘Are you worrying about something?’

  There was a silence. Then he shifted on to his side so that he was turned away from me. ‘Of course not. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Nathan?’ Our pillow-talk was usually conducted face to face and this was when we exchanged snippets that we were supposed to keep secret. ‘We’ve got a nasty exposé coming. A minister, actually’

  There was a grunt. ‘I know. Timon warned me. It’s Charles Madder. They’ve been working on it for months. Had a whole team on the case.’

  That meant at least six people had gone through whatever material they could lay their hands on, dustbins, past records, that sort of thing, and probably kept a watch. ‘Neil Skinner asked me if I minded working for an outfit that could do so much damage to people.’

  ‘You could ask the same question of politicians.’

  ‘True.’ I shifted closer to him and slid my arm round his waist. ‘Even so, I don’t like to think about what’s going to happen to that home.’ I kissed his shoulder, the bit where it begins to curve down into the arm. ‘Death is supposed to be the worst thing to happen, the event that tears out your heart, but it must be far crueller to be made a fool of by the person you loved and trusted. At least if someone dies you can shape them up nicely in your memory.’

  ‘If you can’t stand the heat, Rose, you know what to do.’

  I pinched the edge of his pyjama top between my fingers. ‘Hey, there’s no need for the Gordon Gekko act. We’re in the privacy of our own home.’

  I was expecting a laugh. Instead, Nathan repeated, ‘Go to sleep,’ and edged away.

  I drifted and dreamed, moving in and out of memories, drowsing in scenes of past family life, for things had changed at Lakey Street. The children’s growing up and leaving home had left a space in our married life. Or, rather, it had hauled up an anchor and sometimes I worried that it had left Nathan and me curiously untethered. It was not surprising that from time to time we were taken by surprise at having to make adjustments.

  Which was different from the early days, when we had expected a challenge.

  When I climbed the steps on to the plane in Brazil, I was so weak that my legs shook. I had lost a lot of blood and the doctor warned me snappishly that it would take time, given my foolishness.

  The cabin smelt of plastic with an underlay of sunburnt flesh and businessmen’s aftershave, and was artificially cool. As it was high summer, it was full of families with screeching children and backpackers who had drunk too much beer, heading home to grown-up life. It was going to be a long, trying journey to London.

  I found my seat by a window, and dropped into it. There was a smear of dust on the pane and I rubbed it away with my finger. A bus disgorged yet more passengers who filed up the steps. Quite a few were elderly, kept back, I supposed, so that they could take their time in getting on.

  My finger traced a pattern on the window. Old people did not feel so acutely, did they? The prick and burn of guilt and longing had dulled, their nerve endings had worn away. I wished that I had left behind the years of feeling, stepped over them and gone on to the next stage.

  Figures darted to and fro on the liquefying Tarmac outside. Inside I was liquefying, too. I could not remember ever crying as I was now – the tears seemed unstoppable. I stared out of the window, and they dripped down my cheeks, along my chin and made a right angle down to my neck where they pooled on my sodden collar. My nose streamed.

  Goodbye, sweet.

  The Brazilian sky, which had been hidden from us in the jungle, had never seemed so blue. When it grew dark in the jungle, fireflies gathered on the branches in glowing necklaces that wove in and out of the leaf canopy.

  ‘Look,’ said a male voice in the next seat, ‘you’re probably trying to hide it, but I can see that you’re crying and in need of a handkerchief. Please take mine and I promise not to notice.’

  Something was placed in my lap and my fingers encountered a square of cotton, so soft it must have been washed a hundred times. It felt so civilized, so clean and domestic. I grabbed it. By the time the aircraft rolled out of its berth, it too was sodden.

  We had been airborne for half an hour or so when, eventually, I was sufficiently in control to thank my rescuer. He was a little older than I, and neatly turned out in a linen shirt and pressed trousers, but painfully sunburnt on his neck and hands. He had a briefcase, supple and beautifully sewn, which looked expensive. He was reading a paperback with careful attention. I knew this was intended to reassure me that he would not force his company on me.

  ‘You have been very kind,’ I said.

  He glanced down at the wet ball in my hand. ‘Please keep the handkerchief.’

  ‘I’m so sorry I’ve disturbed you.’

  His smile almost suggested that he welcomed the idea of a female weeping over him. I noticed, too, that he smiled properly, with his eyes as well as his lips. ‘If it’s any comfort, I’ve encountered far worse. So carry on, if you want to.’

  I took him at his word, and continued to cry sporadically for most of the flight while he read his book on South American politics, scribbled in the margins then ate his meal and mine.

  After the trays had been cleared away, he asked, ‘Would you like my shoulder sleep on?’

  Feeling rather foolish, but too exhausted to argue, I accepted and soon slipped out of my anguish. When I woke, we had flown into the night and my companion was asleep too, his shoul
der still supporting me.

  As the aircraft began its descent into Heathrow, the shockingly dull brown and green patchwork of Middlesex framed itself in the plane window. He adjusted his seat into the upright position. ‘It is, of course, perfectly possible that you’re upset over the state of South American politics – don’t look so surprised, some people are. I am, and I would be happy to tell you about it sometime. Or, having murdered a tax inspector, you’re going home to face prison. Or perhaps you have had to say goodbye to a member of the family and you will never see them again, but I think it’s more likely that it has something to do with a love affair.’ I said nothing. ‘He must be a rat,’ he remarked. ‘I’d never give up a woman with hair like yours.’ There was nothing to be said to that either.

  The runway roared up beneath us, and the plane touched down, bounced, and taxied towards the terminal. ‘Would you like to share a taxi with me into London?’ he asked. ‘Don’t worry about the cost, I’m on expenses.’

  Too tired to care about anything, I accepted. ‘I’ll try not to cry’ I looked out at a grey, sodden sky. ‘Do you always deface your books?’

  ‘Only if the contents aren’t up to it.’

  ‘Poor book.’ It was how I felt too. Failure tasted and felt terrible.

  ‘My name is Nathan Lloyd.’ He held out his hand. ‘What’s yours?’

  I told him.

  At seven thirty we were woken by the phone. Nathan groaned and reached out. ‘Yes,’ he said blearily, then snapped to attention. ‘OK, Peter.’

  I slid out of bed. I knew the form. There was a crisis and Nathan was required in the office. War had been declared, a royal had misbehaved, a libel writ had been slapped on his desk. We had lived through them all several times. The curious thing about human behaviour was that it went on happening, despite everyone knowing better.