The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly Read online

  Rose’s first wonder turned out to be hidden in a Polish salt mine. In combat trousers and a thick jacket, she led the viewer down a tunnel and, every so often, the camera panned over the figures and animals carved by the miners into the walls. ‘This unicorn is fourteenth century,’ she said, in voiceover. ‘And this is a bas-relief of a church, and was probably done as a record during a period when churches were being destroyed. In making these carvings, the miners found relief from boredom and fear. They also gave themselves something beautiful to look at.’ She went on to describe that they had worked by lamplight with the crudest of tools. Apparently, the rock crystal possessed special molecular qualities that helped to preserve the carvings, and each had accrued its own set of stories and myths. The camera settled on a figure in a long coat and hood. ‘This is the butcher of Kransk who lured maidens into his shop.’ The focus switched to a man on a horse. ‘This is the knight who reputedly haunts the local forest and whose horn is heard on summer evenings.’

  Rose had always preferred fiction to non-fiction. ‘Novels contain the real truths,’ she had once argued, in the calm way that had annoyed me because it was so settled. I could never budge her from that position – and now? Now I never will. For myself, I stick to the self-help and makeover manuals – which, when I first met him, Nathan said was so touching. He couldn’t be doing with fiction either. I don’t think he has read a novel for, oh, at least fifteen years.

  I pushed aside the tray, took off my shoes and tucked my feet under me.

  The camera focused on Rose’s face, now fretworked by shadows. But she still looked wonderful. ‘The real treasure of the salt mine, the one I have come for, lies further down this corridor… I followed her progress along the passage and into a vault whose walls blazed with pinpricks of light. ‘Here,’ her excitement infected even me, ‘is the Madonna of the Salt. Work began on her in the fifteenth century, and legend has it that she was based on a nun from the convent of St Caterina who died after experiencing visions of Mary, the Mother of Christ. Each year, the community celebrates the statue’s reputation for protecting mothers with an underground candlelit procession and women, who are not normally allowed inside the mine, come with their babies to be blessed…’ She gestured with her right hand, and the large gold ring she wore slipped down her finger. ‘The Madonna of the Salt may be out of sight but she is very much a presence in the town. She is referred to as the “hidden mother”. Incidentally, the phrase “hidden mother” is also used for brides. For obvious reasons, no one may touch the Madonna but, as I stand here in front of her, I’m finding it difficult not to reach out as she’s so lifelike…’

  That was enough. More than enough. I reached for the remote and switched Rose off.

  That Poppy had never accepted me, and doubtless never would, bothered me not a jot. Well, not much. That she had only to pout her red lips and Nathan went running did. ‘She’s a good girl,’ he had told me, more than once. ‘Her heart is absolutely right.’

  Nathan did not tolerate criticism of his children. Not one word – however tactfully I went about it – which I considered misguided. We could all do with a little, especially children, but when it came to Poppy and Sam, Nathan retreated to a locked, soundproof chamber and no amount of knocking would make him open the door.

  Poppy’s heart might have been made of the best-tempered Toledo steel, but she was often wrong. For instance, it had been unkind to wear black at our wedding, and to persist in making her feelings about me so clear even now was divisive. When Nathan left Rose for me, Poppy spat defiance at her father: ‘I never want to see you – or that woman – again. Ever.’ Floating on a tide of moral certainty, she had reduced him to shivering and weeping. ‘She called me an old goat,’ he confessed to me. ‘An old goat.’

  Poppy and Richard had made the transition from flat to large house in a disgustingly short period of time. Richard had made a lot of money in ‘strategy’ and Poppy spent it. The house was Edwardian, spacious and newly refurbished. The windows and paintwork were pristine. The front garden had been designed by a professional. It featured box and carefully graded grey stone. An olive tree in a blue ceramic pot stood in the centre.

  The door was flung open and there was Poppy. ‘Dad!’ she cried, interposing herself between Nathan and me. ‘How lovely.’

  Father and daughter were very alike. They had the same colouring, and facial structure. Naturally Poppy was modelled more delicately – her waist was tiny, and I found myself pulling my pink cardigan edged with ribbon down over my hips. Underneath I wore a lacy half-cup bra that was digging into my flesh. Before the twins, a half-cup bra fitted like a second skin but, these days, I was bothered by its secret chafe. No longer the student, Poppy was groomed, highlighted and wore contact lenses, never glasses. Yet she had never lost her short-sighted habit of peering at you, or her quickness, or her tendency to outbursts. She grabbed her father’s hand and carried it to her cheek. ‘It’s been ages. I’ve missed you, Dad.’

  Nathan put his arm round his daughter and glowed.

  ‘Hallo, Minty,’ Poppy said, at last. Her gaze veered past my shoulder. She broke into a huge smile and opened her arms. ‘Twins! I’ve been counting the minutes.’ She swooped down and drew them close to her.

  ‘I’ve got red socks on,’ Lucas informed his half-sister.

  ‘And I’ve got blue ones.’ Felix brought up the rear.

  ‘I’m wearing socks too,’ Poppy hoicked up her trouser leg, ‘with spots on. Now, boys, I have an important question to ask you.’

  Felix knew exactly what was coming. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I haven’t.’

  Poppy held them tight and pushed her head between theirs. ‘How naughty have you been? Tell me everything.’

  There was much whispering and muttering, and Poppy giggled and said, ‘Felix, you’re tickling my ear.’ Eventually she pronounced, ‘Is that all?’ Then she said gravely, ‘I can be much naughtier than that.’

  Lunch was a gigot of lamb cooked with flageolet beans and garlic. NB Flageolet beans are a useful, sophisticated vegetable. Half-way through, I glanced at Nathan. He was talking about oil prices, but there was an abstraction about him, a suggestion of discomfort, because every so often his eyes squeezed shut.

  Did Poppy notice? While she talked, she fiddled with her expensive crystal necklace – the leather thongs, feathers and beads she had loved to wear when I first met her had been long banished. It was beautiful and she caressed it reverently. When she thought no one was watching, her gaze rested on her husband and there was no doubt of her adoration.

  Richard appeared unconscious of his wife. He had settled in to enjoy himself – which he showed every indication of doing. He and Nathan had moved on to detailed discussion of hedge funds, the twins were concentrating on their ice-cream and I was behaving myself.

  Poppy seemed restless and had disappeared more than once into the kitchen. She jumped up again, this time to refill my water glass. ‘Daddy and Richard are boring for England.’ Her eyes rested indulgently on them as she cast around for some point of contact with me. ‘How are your friends, Minty?’

  ‘Oh, Paige is fine. About to have her third baby.’

  Poppy put down the jug on its mat and wiped away a minute spot of water from the table. ‘She gave up her very high-powered job, didn’t she, to be with the children?’

  ‘She made the sacrifice.’ I spoke lightly.

  Poppy’s long eyelashes beat down over the shortsighted eyes. ‘Women just don’t know which way to go.’

  ‘Isn’t that sloppy thinking? All we have to do is choose.’

  ‘But it’s so complicated.’

  True, but I was reluctant to yield a point to Poppy. Furthermore, she was spoiling for confrontation. Nathan was watching me. Please, he begged silently. No arguments. Why Poppy should escape censure for some of her sillier statements, I would never fathom, but I did the right thing and, conversationally, ducked. ‘How are things at work?’

  Poppy used to work in publi
shing but recently she had astonished her family by taking a job in a firm that imported exotic candles from China and sold them through upmarket shops. ‘Fine, fine, fine. The mad Christmas push is still going on. So mad, sometimes, I have to help with the packing.’ She sketched an imaginary box with her hands. ‘I like that. I like physically handling something, and the colours and scents are exquisite.’ She added, ‘As a culture, we’re not hands-on enough. We don’t like to get our hands dirty.’

  Richard had been conscripted into telling the twins a story. Lucas was snorting with laughter, but Felix was puzzled, I could tell. His expression meant that he was questioning what he was hearing. ‘The big brown bear,’ said Richard, crooking his fingers and placing them at either side of his head, ‘gobbled up the wizard.’

  ‘Wizards don’t get gobbled,’ said Felix, flatly, and I rejoiced in his capacity not to be taken in.

  Richard lowered his hands. ‘I can’t make you believe me.’

  Lucas shouted, ‘I believe you! I believe you, don’t I, Mummy?’

  I was about to reply, ‘Of course you do,’ when I met Felix’s anxious eyes, and saw that he was terrified of being shown up. Nathan sent me the tiniest shake of his head. ‘You can believe what you wish, both of you,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you can,’ said Richard, all good humour, but with the unease of someone who was not truly at home with children.

  Felix slid down from his chair and hurled himself at me. I ran my fingers through his hair, relishing the texture of his tufty curls. His breath was scented with garlic, his body pressing mine. Whether I liked it or not, the connection between him and me flowed up through my fingers.

  After a few seconds, Lucas climbed down from his chair and leant against Nathan in imitation of his brother.

  ‘Twins,’ Poppy reproved them. ‘We haven’t quite finished.’

  ‘Leave them,’ said their indulgent father.

  ‘But you mustn’t let them be spoilt.’ Poppy laid a hand on her father’s shoulder. ‘Not even a teeny bit.’ She shook her head and the crystal necklace glinted very satisfactorily indeed. ‘You mustn’t spoil them, Dad.’

  ‘They’re not spoilt,’ I said crossly. ‘Far from it.’

  For a second or two conversation was suspended. Richard threw in a diversionary tactic. ‘Are you going on holiday this year?’ He managed to sound so interested that the tension was broken.

  Grateful to him, I sipped my wine and assessed the room. To her credit, Poppy had got it right. A striped wallpaper in old rose and gold, comfortable chairs, flowers. The effect was simple and muted, and I wondered if I had overdone the dining room at home. Was the effect too crowded? Had I tried too hard? I decided that the Chinese figurines should go.

  Later, I went up the freshly painted and carpeted staircase to the bathroom, past a shelf of photographs, all framed in the same way. And there was Rose – of course – in shorts and strappy sandals, sitting at a café table in what seemed to be a Mediterranean port. The sun was shining, and the scene exuded a shimmering iridescence. Leaning back in the chair, she was inclining her face to the camera, a mark of trust, and a smile played on her lips. One hand held a coffee cup, the other rested in her lap. Tenderness was apparent in the composition of the photograph by the unseen eye. From the bottom of my heart, I envied Rose her ease, and the sensation of hot sun on her arms and legs.

  Coming up behind me, Poppy said, ‘That one of Mum was taken last year on Paxos.’

  ‘I saw the programme the other night. It was very good.’

  ‘Yes, Mum’s brilliant.’ Poppy was poised between challenge and the good manners she imposed on herself as hostess. The latter got the better of her. Which bathroom do you want to use?’

  I murmured that I didn’t mind. As she led me to the second guest bathroom, we passed a small room in which a computer terminal was switched on. The screen-saver showed brightly coloured fish darting about. When I returned from the bathroom, the screen read, ‘Poker On Line. Game Five.’ Someone had been in there.

  Before we left, I sought out Poppy, who was stacking china in the kitchen. ‘Thank you so much for lunch,’ I said and, then, surprising myself, ‘Is everything all right?’

  She cast a glance at the crockery, and her lips tightened. We didn’t say a word but she knew I’d seen the on-line poker. Then she fixed me with defiant eyes. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t be better.’

  As we drove home in the late afternoon, Nathan touched my thigh. ‘I know you’ve tried with Poppy.’ I must have started because he added, ‘Am I such a pig? Do you think I don’t notice?’

  ‘You’re not a pig.’ I looked out of the window, unsure how to respond. I had grown used to saying nothing. Anyway, the silences that characterized Nathan’s and my life together were deceptive: they were noisy with the unsaid. The London streets rolled past, revealing their Sunday aspect – serviceable acres of Tarmac and city trees that struggled to survive.

  The interior of the 4x4 required cleaning, and smelt of the cranberry juice that one of the boys had spilt in the back. NB Put on the list for Eve. I searched my bag for a tissue. ‘Poppy and I rub along.’

  Nathan’s hand tightened on my thigh. ‘I wasn’t thinking about Poppy when I married you.’

  It was a small concession, but I felt a sudden comfort and pleasure in his ratification of my place in his hierarchy. In my handbag, my fingers encountered a sucked boiled sweet that Felix had discarded and I had rescued from the car seat. The stickiness, and the fact that it was in my bag, which I liked to keep immaculate, instantly banished the feel-good factor and I said, more sharply than I’d intended, ‘You married me because you thought I’d make you happy. I don’t think you are happy. And I don’t know what I can do about it.’

  Nathan stared straight ahead. ‘You read my notebook, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’ I could hear the sound of many doors banging shut in Nathan’s head. ‘Nathan, we should make time for a discussion.’ I can’t pretend that I said this with urgency and conviction, but I thought I should try.

  ‘Not here.’ He jerked his head at the back, where the twins were making their favourite aircraft noises.

  ‘Of course not. What do you take me for?’

  We halted at traffic-lights, and the occupant of a small Fiat shook his fist and pointed to the poster on his back windscreen: ‘4 X 4? Y?’ The lights changed. Nathan drove into Lakey Street and parked. ‘Minty, the notebook was private.’ He rubbed his forehead. All the same, I detected a frisson of… relief? ‘I can’t trust you not to pry.’

  ‘What, Mummy?’ interrupted Lucas. ‘What, Mummy?’

  ‘Maybe you can’t.’ I left it like that, swung out of the car, released the twins from captivity, and exhumed spare clothes, toys and the books without which Felix never went anywhere. Thus burdened, I walked up the path behind my husband and sons.

  A little later, Nathan said, ‘I need some exercise.’ He had changed into a pair of worn corduroys and a checked shirt with frayed cuffs.

  I was unpacking the twins’ toys and working out what to give them for supper. A walk? Take the boys, will you?’

  ‘I think I’ll have a go at digging the garden.’

  ‘Digging the garden?’ Wooden engine in hand, I whirled round. ‘You haven’t done that for years.’

  ‘All the same,’ Nathan stuck his hands into his pockets, ‘I think I will.’

  The twins’ football sessions had turned the lawn into a Slough of Despond. I watched Nathan pick his way across it and haul a fork out of the garden shed. From the set of his shoulders, he was perfectly happy, and it was a fair bet that he was whistling. He began to dig under the lilac tree and, after a while, earth was piled beside him.

  Half an hour later, I took him a mug of tea. The dark was galloping in, it was chilly and Nathan’s shirt was damp with sweat under the arms. He wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘Good girl.’

 
; ‘Why the interest in the garden all of a sudden?’ The question was redundant because I already knew the answer.

  He drank some tea. ‘It used to be beautiful.’

  ‘You’ve been thinking of Rose,’ I accused him, ‘haven’t you? You’ve been talking to her. That diagram I found in your diary. Was it for this garden?’ I gestured at the broken fence, the tangle of grass, the leafless lilac. ‘“Height. Route. Rest.” Was it for here?’

  ‘Don’t, Minty,’ Nathan said heavily. ‘We don’t discuss Rose. Remember?’

  ‘About the diary -’

  ‘Forget it. It’s mine. Private.’ His brows twitched together.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine.’ His finger beat a tattoo on his chest. ‘Bit of a pain. I ate too much.’

  In chapter three of Coping with Life Strategies (currently beside my bed), the author recommends cognitive behavioural therapy for tricky problems. If a bad thought recurs to the point of damaging one’s well-being, it’s best to avoid it, using thought-evasion techniques. Weary to the bone with marriage, I bent down and plucked a trailing white root from the pile of earth, and let it dangle from my fingers.

  I thought hard of Paradox’s Monday agenda. I conjured up the Chinese figurines, whose days were numbered in the dining room. I thought about the fish pie I had taken out of the freezer for the twins’ supper.

  Failure.

  I turned back to Nathan. ‘Why on earth did I believe you when you said you came to me with the sheet wiped clean?’

  I should have kissed him, and prevented him answering. Regrets are a waste of energy, I should have pointed out, stopping his mouth with that ungiven kiss. I should have talked about anything but this.