Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman Read online

  I picked up the phone and rang Poppy. ‘Darling, are you all right?’

  ‘Mum, will you stop fussing over me? I’m fine.’ Her voice softened. ‘But it’s nice to hear you.’

  ‘Dad didn’t ring you last night?’

  ‘Out until the wee small hours, Mum.’

  ‘Darling, I have to tell you something. I’m afraid… I’m afraid Dad has found…’ That sounded so bald and I thought Nathan deserved better. ‘He has fallen in love with someone else and has left home.’

  Poppy’s cry of disbelief echoed down the phone. ‘Who? Which woman?’

  ‘Minty.’

  There was a long, long silence. When Poppy spoke, she sounded different – quite old, in fact, and as if a joyous element in her had shrivelled and died. ‘The old goat. Dad’s turned into an old goat.’

  ‘Please. Don’t say that about him.’

  ‘But it’s true’

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated. Obviously, he had come to a point where he felt he must have a change.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear,’ Poppy shrieked. ‘I wish you’d never phoned. Mum, I can’t talk about it. I’ll have to talk to you later.’

  ‘Of course.’

  At that Poppy calmed down. ‘I should be comforting you – and I will, I promise I will, Mum, but I’ll have to get over the shock first.’

  Next, I dialled Timon’s private number.

  Timon’s wife, Mary, bitterly resented intrusions at weekends. We had discussed this sometimes at office parties and she told me that one of her tactics was to freeze people out. When she answered the phone I got the freezing treatment. I explained that I would not have dreamt of ringing on a Sunday morning unless it was necessary. ‘Oh, well, then,’ she said, caught perhaps by curiosity, ‘but we do have guests.’ She handed the phone to Timon.

  ‘Rose, has something happened?’

  A food-processor sprang into life in the background, accompanied by a meaningful clash of saucepans. ‘I thought I should explain that I shall have to sack Minty on Monday’

  ‘I see,’ said Timon. ‘Listen, can you hang on? I’m going to change phones.’ When he came back on the line the noises had stopped. ‘Could you give me the details?’ So I did.

  ‘Nathan has left you for Minty.’ Timon gave a short laugh that meant, ‘Who would have thought there was life in the old dog?’ which made me angry on Nathan’s behalf. ‘This certainly presents complications,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t have her in the office. You do understand?’

  ‘Hang on.’ Timon became formal. ‘There are rules and regulations, Rose. You can’t sack people just like that. I think you must leave this to me.’

  I swallowed. ‘All right. But I won’t have her sitting in my office. She will have to go somewhere else.’

  Timon cleared his throat. ‘Under the circumstances, you might like to take a day off, Rose. That would be perfectly all right. Take the week.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘you don’t understand. The work is important to me, and I wouldn’t dream of abandoning it.’

  ‘As you wish.’ He considered further. ‘Leave it with me, and see me at eleven thirty on Monday’

  I finished that conversation feeling better. At least I had done something. Made a stand over Minty.

  Huddled into the rug, I sat and thought about deceit. How was it possible to live for long periods of time without letting clues slip? In a peculiar way, I felt nothing but admiration for Nathan and Minty because I didn’t think I would have had the wit and style to carry off such a secret. How did Minty square taking such an interest in my clothes, my ideas, my family, which I knew was genuine, with the knowledge that she was taking my husband to bed?

  How, for example, did Nathan manage to insist that I sit down with him and review our pension situation when he knew he was not going to be around? Perhaps the effects of harbouring a deep, fearful secret were so debilitating that an autopilot took over the normal, humdrum bits of your life and permitted you to act normally.

  Perhaps we all lived on several levels and juggled them without thinking about it. Perhaps one grew so attached to everyday habits and questions – they were so bred into the blood and the bone – that one could not bear to give them up, even though one knew that, by any law of justice, one should do so.

  Chapter Eight

  On Monday morning I prepared myself to go into work. I sat down at the dressing-table, and smoothed layer after layer of cream into my face. It was dry and sore from weeping, and the skin under my fingertips felt like cracked tissue paper.

  The sunlight in the bedroom spared me nothing: a startlingly blue vein on my leg, the dark, troubled circles under my eyes, a toe that had once been unblemished. Hang on. This is not the right woman in the mirror. The right one is the young, happy one.

  I chose a sea-island T-shirt, a linen trouser suit and flat black pumps. I put on mascara, a slash of red lipstick and brushed my hair into shiny obedience. Then, with Parsley colonizing my lap, I painted my nails bright battle red. This was my armoury, the best I could summon, but when I levered myself to my feet, and Parsley slid protesting to the floor, I discovered cat hairs trapped in the wet varnish. ‘You wretch, Parsley’

  The green eyes turned in my direction. You fool, Rose.

  I picked the cat hair off my nails and went downstairs to the kitchen. I tapped the coffee pot, but decided against it and tried to eat a banana, but abandoned it.

  Outside, it looked as though it was going to be fine again and, concierge and custodian, I went from room to room, drawing back curtains, plumping up a cushion, wiping away a smear of dust, seeking comfort from the intimacies and familiarities of my routines. The clock’s tick in the sitting room seemed abnormally loud in the still, silent air.

  The contents of my book bag remained where I had left them. I checked them over. A piece I should have edited. A couple of memos I should have read. The novel, the cookery book and the biography, which, in the normal course, I would have dipped into before sending them out for review.

  Bag over my shoulder, I closed the door on the house, the cool sitting room and its ticking clock, on the garden, and the drift of a light rain on the grass, on the double bedroom where, deep in the past, Nathan had whispered to me that he was so lucky, so lucky, to have me and, in reply, I had breathed thankfulness into the night.

  The strap of my bag had made a groove in my finger – I was clasping it so hard – by the time I stepped out of the lift at the office. Jenny from Human Resources was waiting to get in. When she saw me, her expression turned to mild panic and I thought, So soon. Not that I had imagined Nathan and I would be immune from gossip. To give Jenny a chance to collect her wits, I made a play of swapping my heavy bag from hand to hand. ‘Morning, Jenny.’

  ‘Look,’ she muttered, ‘I want you to know…’

  It was the cruel office joke that, despite being a paper expert on human resources, Jenny was no good at them in the flesh, and she could not finish whatever she wanted to say. Instead, she bolted for the lift. The doors clacked shut.

  It was not a good start, and as I made for my desk, I summoned every ounce of the control and wit I would need to negotiate the long hours. Then, with a shock, I realized I was not very interested in getting through the long hours. Feeling sick and shaky, I sank into my chair and the photograph caught my eye.

  Nathan’s face smiled out at me, and I tried to think of something else. Ianthe maintained we were on this earth to be tested. I always laughed when she said this, and told her she was being old-fashioned, New Testament-ish. I said it even though I knew she was right.

  The coffee machine clicked and gushed. The photocopier disgorged hot, acrid shanks of paper. The clack and bustle of office life closed in, insulating the occupants of the building with thick, polystyrene walls of habit.

  The phone rang. It was an author whose novel had received a bad review. I listened politely to an outpouring of rage, which finished, ‘You were out to get me.’

 
‘No, not at all. The piece made the point that you would sell magnificently. I’m sorry my reviewer did not like it.’

  He snapped back, ‘You don’t like the fact that I’ve made a lot of money.’

  ‘How very nice for you.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Nathan… in his grey suit, heading for Timon’s office and disappearing inside. He looked neither to right nor left. Caught off-guard, I dropped the phone and buried my face in my hands.

  ‘Rose,’ Maeve Otley limped over, ‘you don’t look so good. I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’ She edged it on to my desk with her lumpy, painful hands. Tut some sugar in it. Go on, you’ll need it.’

  Maeve was far shrewder than she ever let on. She touched my shoulder briefly. Her sympathy was easy, but I had never imagined it would be so hard to accept. ‘Thank you,’ I managed.

  Maeve favoured long sleeves to hide her hands, and she fussed with the cuffs of her purple dress. I think she was making a judgement about how much I could, or could not, take on board. ‘Don’t let them beat you,’ she said at last, and returned to her desk.

  I had neither the energy nor the focus to consider what she might have meant, and I reached for something, anything, from the nearest basket on the desk. As it happened, it was the discarded review of Hal’s book. ‘This man is a fraud…’ wrote the critic happily. I held it between fingers that had grown cold with the shock of seeing Nathan. Hal was too good and too stringent a writer to have an easy ride. Anyway, he always maintained that a gene had been implanted in the English that triggered the worst. Quality and brilliance reacted with envy to produce acid.

  My rule had been never to look at Hal’s books and I had kept to it religiously. But now I picked up A Thousand Olive Trees from the June pile. Once upon a time, I had imagined that Hal’s face would remain in my memory for ever. It had not. The details and sharp outlines had faded, leaving an impression, the blurred recollection – like all the other so-called ineradicable memories. Like old stone weathering and fading. Like sand shifting in dunes. I turned to the back flap of the jacket, and there he was, leaner, older, fair hair bleached and battered by the sun, looking much as I would have expected.

  Nathan was carving the chicken. The kitchen was steamy and fragrant with cooking and herbs; the radio played in the background. I chopped carrots into matchsticks. Having been dragged out of bed at midday, the seventeen-year-old Sam and fifteen-year-old Poppy were in their rooms, reluctantly getting dressed. Sartorially they were at the stage of toned-down anarchic punk. Sam offered us a variety of paint-sprayed T-shirts, incorporating the word ‘kill’. Poppy favoured jeans with the waistbands cut off.

  ‘The book of the week,’ said the announcer, ‘is an account of a journey through the North African desert. Desert and Go by Hal Thorne will begin on Monday at nine forty-five…’

  In the saucepan the water hissed and foamed as the carrots hit its surface. ‘Lunch will be in a moment,’ I said. ‘Can you chivvy the children?’ Since Nathan did not move I went and shouted to them up the stairs. ‘Thanks,’ I snapped at him on my return.

  ‘Have you read it?’ Nathan carved a slice of moist white flesh.

  The question had been sprung with the quiet of the hunter. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because…’ I moved over to the sink and tipped the carrots into a colander. The steam batted me in the face.

  ‘Because,’ Nathan finished the carving, and arranged the chicken on an oval plate, ‘he is still with you. Or the idea of him.’

  ‘This is the one o’clock news,’ interposed the newscaster.

  I transferred the carrots to a dish and put it in the oven to keep warm. Nathan and I had being going through a bad patch, but nothing too significant. We were tired and far too busy, that was all. The truth was that Nathan’s job was getting in the way of our family life, which was changing anyway, and my job was pretty demanding, but I reckoned we could weather the irritants. Even so, I did not consider the subject of Hal a good one to pursue. I said lightly, ‘That’s not true, Nathan. I don’t read his books because they don’t interest me.’

  ‘But it’s your business to read what you don’t necessarily like.’

  I busied myself with chopping parsley. ‘Not always.’

  ‘Oh, Rosie, you’re such a bad liar.’

  No, I’m not, I thought. I’m a brilliant, accomplished liar. But I have always lied for a good cause, the best of reasons. When Nathan moved towards me in the bed and I, having twisted and turned through a day of children’s cries, work’s demands and husband-soothing, thought, Sleep, sleep, peace. And he said something like, It’s been a long time, Rose. And I replied, still aching for sleep, Far, far too long. That was one of my best lies.

  ‘Why are you bringing all this up now, Nathan? It’s gone, finished. I married you, remember? We’re happy.’ I moved back to the stove and gave the gravy a quick whisk. ‘I couldn’t be happier.’

  Nathan continued, as if I had not said anything, ‘Weren’t you going to travel through the desert with him?’

  ‘There was talk of it at one point, but it came to nothing. It was a very long time ago. Please, go and call the children again or lunch will get cold.’

  Nathan dropped the carving knife and fork with a clatter that cut through the mutter of the radio. ‘Call them yourself.’ He swung on his heel and left the kitchen.

  I knew where to find him: in his study. Hands folded in his lap, he was sitting at the desk, staring at the neat pile of bills and family documents. There were tears in his eyes, tears that were almost certainly my fault but I did not know what they were for.

  I stood with my hands on my hips. ‘Nathan, you’re making more of Hal than I ever have. It’s become a habit, an excuse. You know perfectly well that as a subject Hal could not be more dead.’

  Nathan shrugged. It was a gesture that begged for the balm of reassurance and comfort. I knelt beside him, took his hands in mine and kissed them. ‘Nathan, you could not be more wrong.’

  A sixth sense prompted me to look up. Minty was walking towards me, as purposefully as her kitten heels would permit. She came to a halt by my chair.

  At first, I refused to look at her. Then I did.

  She was sleek with triumph and secret pleasure, or so it seemed to me, the Rose with new vision. Cowering was not Minty’s style, and I had always admired her courage. That, and the slender body under the white tank top and tiny black skirt. Her beauty and promise were handled… how? With the confidence of a woman whose generation did not understand why feminism had been necessary.

  ‘Please leave,’ I said. ‘I’ve asked for you to be transferred, if not sacked. Didn’t Timon phone you?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’ She moved across to her desk and flipped on the screen. ‘I considered not showing, but I thought I owed it to you to face you, and you can call me any name you like. So now I have, and I’m getting out for the time being, but just before I quit the battlefield, I’ll check my e-mails.’ Cool and efficient, she typed in her password.

  ‘Why?’ I asked her. ‘We were friends.’

  ‘Of course.’ She executed a couple of commands, peered at the screen, then signed off.

  ‘I gave you your break.’

  ‘And I’ve thanked you for it, Rose, more than once. Do I have to be grateful for the rest of my life?’ She opened her drawer and took out her contacts book and diary, which she dropped into her bag. ‘Why don’t we talk about the real subject of this conversation? Nathan was there for the taking, Rose. Ask him.’

  ‘Nathan was perfectly happy.’

  Her dark eyes did not blink. ‘He says not He says he needs some attention. I give it to him.’

  Suddenly I was fearful for Minty. And you believed him? I thought you were so sharp.’

  Minty got to her feet. ‘You can say what you like, Rose, but it won’t change anything.’

  I wanted the words to cease, and craved the mercy of silence. I wanted to give in to despai
r, to crawl away, lie down and die, like a diseased pie-dog in the sun. But if I did that, I would be yielding every advantage to Minty. It was not as if Nathan and I had grown miles apart and there was nothing left. It was not like that at all. I had memories, joyous and nourishing, of a good, happy family that Nathan and I had built brick by brick. Good, strong achievements, for which it was worth fighting.

  I pushed myself upright wearily. ‘You’re interfering in something you don’t understand. You don’t know the truth about our marriage, whatever Nathan may have told you.’ Minty leant back on the desk and transcribed a circle on the carpet with a slender foot. It infuriated and terrified me. I added, ‘He only says that for the obvious reason.’

  ‘He could get that anyway. No lies necessary’

  ‘Oh, God.’ I dropped back into the chair.

  The hope that this episode was a minor one, through which Nathan and I would struggle, vanished and with it the flare of hope that I could mastermind this… test. If Nathan had lied through his teeth to gain occupancy of Minty’s body then I would have wept, burned and forgiven him. But this. No lies necessary.

  ‘Was it you… or him?’ I looked down at my naked hand. ‘Who?’

  She understood. ‘It was me, Rose. I’ve always liked Nathan. He’s a nice man, a wonderful man, a pussy-cat, who happens to be rather powerful. It was a fling at first, nothing for you to worry about and I wasn’t ever going to let you know. Then it became more… complicated and I’m afraid you had to be told.’

  ‘He is wonderful,’ I said.

  ‘What a pity you didn’t tell him,’ Minty reflected. ‘But I shall.’

  Her arrogance was astonishing. I concentrated on the one aspect of this cold little history with which I felt I could cope. ‘And you carried on working with me?’

  ‘It never does to mix things up. It’s a bad habit.’ She checked the contents of her bag and picked it up. Tor what it’s worth, Rose, I’m sorry it was you. I wish it had been anybody else.’

  At eleven thirty sharp I knocked on Timon’s door -editors were allowed doors – and was told to enter.