The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly Page 8

  The candles I had placed on the table guttered. Nathan ate the organic fillet steak slowly. ‘Not bad.’

  Not bad? Every mouthful had cost a fortune. I swallowed the final piece as if it was gold dust and said, ‘One day I’ll learn to cook.’

  Nathan uttered a snort midway between laughter and derision. ‘It’s not you, Minty’

  Upstairs, there was an eruption. Despite the direst warnings, the twins were swapping beds, as they did most nights. Nathan cocked an ear. ‘It’s fine,’ I reassured him. ‘Tell me what’s happening at Vistemax. I talked to Gisela yesterday and she said Roger’s ultra-preoccupied. I thought you’d had a good year?’

  Nathan pushed away his plate. ‘A big libel suit,’ he confessed. ‘It was an article in Weekend Digest about bungs for football managers. It’s likely to cost Vistemax, and it happened on my watch.’

  ‘But not your fault.’

  ‘Not directly. My responsibility, though.’

  ‘You should have told me.’ The kitchen was quiet. ‘Journalists,’ I murmured. Since leaving Vistemax, I had lost track of what went on in the company. Nathan, however, swam with ease though the numbers and strategy. ‘You should have said something,’ I repeated.

  Nathan shrugged.

  The silence had become that of two people who were not communicating on the same level. On this point Successful Relationships was firm and clear: it was a situation that should be sorted.

  ‘I’ve bought you these,’ I heard myself say, and handed him the bottle of multi-vitamins I had picked up in my lunch hour.

  He tossed the bottle from one hand to the other. ‘Thank you, Mother Minty.’

  He changed into an old shirt in a washed-out blue that he had had since the dawn of time and refused to throw away. In the candlelight, the colour deepened. My skirt, a deep black, now gleamed bluish. One of the candles flickered and went out. Nathan leant forward, nipped the wick between his fingers and said, with regret, ‘Minty, you shouldn’t be spending your life watching me.’

  ‘It has been a bad day.’

  He blew on smoked fingers. ‘Yes, it has.’

  ‘Nathan…’ The words trembled on my tongue. What is your ‘secret grief’? But I already knew the answer. Nathan’s secret grief was Rose and the past… and so was mine.

  ‘Take one of those vitamins.’ I reached for the bottle and unscrewed the lid. ‘I’ll take one too.’ I held a pill between my thumb and finger. ‘Be a good boy’

  Nathan observed it for a second or two. ‘Later,’ he said.

  I should have pressed on: Let’s discuss your diary. Let us, together, sort out what is making you unhappy. But the expression that had settled on his face meant that my words aborted. It was not so much impatience and distaste, although those were mirrored in his face – and I was unsure whether they were directed at himself or at me – it was his obvious, disturbing, detachment. Nathan had removed himself from the kitchen, and I had no idea where to.

  I tried again: ‘Nathan, I know I shouldn’t have read what you wrote, but we must talk about it.’

  ‘What?’ With effort, Nathan refocused on me. ‘Actually…’ He stopped.

  ‘Nathan, I want to talk to you about… the diary. About what I read.’

  ‘No,’ Nathan cut me off. ‘I don’t want to discuss it. It’s silly, and very private.’

  ‘But…’ The obvious question was, why did you leave it for me to read? However, I had learnt that most things in our relationship were not straightforward and I had to pick my way through the maze.

  ‘I said I didn’t want to discuss it.’

  ‘If you feel like that.’ Suddenly I had lost interest in exploring my husband’s psyche. I shoved back my chair and got to my feet. If I’d had three magic wishes all three would have gone on summoning back the old Nathan. I could never have the young one, but I would dearly have liked to reclaim the version who had swash-buckled into my life and said, ‘Let’s escape.’

  ‘Nathan, can you pass me that saucepan?’ I busied myself running hot water and swishing in washing-up liquid.

  ‘Sure.’ If he was surprised at my change of mood, he was not going to remark on it. ‘But there is something…’

  The sound of the doorbell shot through the house. Nathan started. ‘This is what I should have mentioned.’

  I stiffened, but said coolly enough, ‘You’d better go and answer the door, then. Hope it hasn’t woken the boys.’

  ‘But…’ Nathan was alight with an excitement and dread I couldn’t place. Then he shrugged. ‘OK.’

  He went into the hall, and I heard voices, then the front door closing.

  Nathan led the visitor into the sitting room and I wiped my hands, tucked my hair behind my ears and went to see who it was. Nathan whipped round as I walked in, a curious smile hovering at the corners of his mouth. ‘Look who’s here.’

  But a sixth sense had already told me.

  Rose.

  This was the encounter that provided material for any late-night demons, any restless dreams, for the chill of a dawn catechism when I asked myself what I had done in taking Nathan. My first impulse was to laugh: it was ridiculous that Rose should be standing there. Then my knees drained of strength.

  ‘Rose.’ I held the back of a chair for support.

  ‘Hello, Minty’ She held out a hand. ‘You’re looking well.’

  She was dressed simply but expensively in jeans and a tweed jacket nipped in at the waist – slimmer than she appeared on television. She was tanned and her hair was glorious: long, highlighted and silky. She was barely recognizable as the woman I had known in the office, wearing a grey skirt and black jumper that bagged in all the wrong places. ‘Literature, Minty,’ I pictured her saying, as she did in those days, ‘is full of stories about tension between servant and master.’ Her hair would have been bundled up any-old-how, and her lipstick was always too pink. There’s a short story about a pair of sisters who were so in awe of Cook that they never dared go into their own kitchen. They spent most of their lives fearful and thirsty’

  Then, Rose had hovered between wryness and laughter. This Rose did too. There was no hint of bitterness, only a polite interest as she took in the changes to the sitting room.

  Terrific, I thought. We end up where we began. Where once I had observed this room through Rose’s eyes – painted a pale dove grey, the sofa and chairs arranged close to the window – Rose was observing it through mine: a cream-yellow paint wash, the sofa and chairs pulled closer to the fireplace. She was probably concluding, as I had done: That woman does not understand this room.

  ‘What are you doing here, Rose?’

  Her gaze swung between me and Nathan. ‘Didn’t Nathan tell you?’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘Nathan, you didn’t tell Minty. That’s bad of you. I wanted to talk to Nathan and he suggested that I drop in since I was going to be in the area. We’d have had to meet sooner or later though, wouldn’t we, Minty? Is it OK?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not prepared.’

  Rose could have said, ‘Nothing prepared me for you to take Nathan.’ She considered. ‘I don’t think either of us has anything to be afraid of. Not any more.’

  I missed her – I mean, I missed the kind, soft Rose, the wife to Nathan who had brimmed with the desire to help and who said things like ‘Tell me what’s wrong, Minty’, or ‘You’re not to worry’ Unsurprisingly, that Rose had vanished from my life.

  She shifted a bag, with fashionable buckles and straps, from one shoulder to the other. Her love of handbags hadn’t changed. The smile she directed at Nathan was friendly and well disposed, and I swear he winced. ‘Nathan, about Sam…’

  I raised an eyebrow at Nathan, who looked utterly helpless. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Sam has a problem and Rose wanted to discuss it.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. I didn’t add, Why didn’t you tell me?

  ‘Dad!’ There was a cry from the top of the stairs.

  Nathan went out of the room and hissed, ‘Get back i
nto bed, Lukey. Now.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Minty,’ Rose said. ‘I wouldn’t have come if I’d known Nathan hadn’t cleared it with you. I should have realized he’d duck it.’ I gave a little laugh, and she added, ‘I remember your laugh. It’s distinctive and I could always tell where you were.’

  For some reason, that made me both angry and sad. ‘Do you still see Hal?’ I asked. ‘How is he?’

  Her eyes narrowed, but she answered politely: ‘We still see each other, of course. Quite a lot. It’s great… A great friendship. I’m lucky in that.’

  ‘I’ve always wondered.’

  Nathan returned and pressed on Rose a drink, coffee, whatever she would like. ‘Some wine,’ she conceded.

  ‘I’ll check on the twins,’ I said. ‘You’d better get on with your conversation. Don’t mind me.’

  Nathan sent me a look that meant, Please don’t be like that. I sent him one back: Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.

  ‘The twins? How are they? I hear a lot about them.’ Rose could only summon a polite interest in two children she’d never seen. ‘I gather Frieda – Sam’s Frieda – gets on well with them.’

  ‘I know who Frieda is, Rose.’

  ‘Minty…’ Nathan intervened, with a note of warning.

  Rose merely replied, ‘How stupid of me. Of course you do.’ She turned back to Nathan. ‘As for our son…’

  ‘Our’. It dropped from Rose’s mouth with all her rights to its usage.

  I fled the room and ran upstairs. Lucas had settled and both boys were sleeping calmly enough – in the wrong beds. Felix was hunched under his duvet. Lucas had thrown his off, and I tucked it over him, adjusted the night-light and found myself by the ironing-board on the landing.

  Downstairs the voices murmured. I heard Nathan laugh and say ‘No…’ in the way he did when he was particularly amused. The construction and timbre of that word seemed expressly designed to exclude me.

  I snatched up one of his ironed shirts and began to fold it this way and that. In the perfect syllogism, the logic flows without a hitch from proposition A to proposition B, which results in the only possible conclusion. For example: husband leaves first wife because he is unhappy; he marries second wife who he ‘knows’ will make him happy; she believes him; they are happy.

  Perfect syllogism. Imperfect world.

  I was clutching Nathan’s shirt so tightly that my hands hurt. I dropped it on the floor, stepped over it and crept downstairs, like the thief I was.

  Light spilled into the hall from the sitting room. The door was half closed, but sufficiently open to allow me to watch the scene inside.

  7

  Nathan and Rose were ensconced on the sofa. Rose was toying with her glass, fingers curling and uncurling round its stem. The big gold ring she wore on her right hand caught my eye, so bright it hurt. Nathan was leaning back against the cushions, one hand spread along the top of the sofa. It was a pose suggesting relaxation and ease. Every so often, his gaze settled on his first wife like that of a starving dog on a bone.

  ‘They never last,’ Rose was saying, all indulgence and affection, which meant she could only be talking about her daughter. ‘How many times, Nathan, have we seen that?’ Nathan hung on her every syllable. ‘All the same, I’m a little worried about Poppy. I detect a certain, well… restlessness. I asked if she and Richard were getting on all right, and she said she’d never been happier. But you know how it is, Nathan – you can sense that something’s not quite right.’

  Nathan lifted the hand that lay on the back of the sofa in agreement. ‘Can’t be money, surely.’

  Rose said affectionately, ‘No, Nathan. It’s not money. At least, I don’t think so. It can’t be. Richard earns such a lot.’

  ‘Someone has to think about money.’ He smiled at her, complicit and gentle in a way he never was with me.

  I could have enlightened them as to what Poppy hadn’t told her mother. Almost certainly it was to do with the on-line poker. I could have said to them, ‘Do you realize that Poppy’s probably gambling and losing? And the more she loses, the more she’ll play. It’s the nature of the beast.’ They could have seized the chance to act in concert, and asked, ‘How much and how deep?’ They could have gone in tandem to have it out with Poppy. You can tell us. We’re your parents. We love you. But, yes, I held my silence. I didn’t hold any brief for Poppy, but what was her business was her business.

  Nathan put his elbows on his knees and leant forward. It was a pose he adopted frequently, which emulated Rodin’s The Thinker. ‘ About Sam, is Jilly happy for him to take the job?’

  Rose tucked a leg under her. ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss. Jilly’s furious at the idea of leaving Winchcombe. Apparently she’s threatening to stay behind. She says she hates America, Texas in particular.’

  ‘She’s never been to Texas, and she won’t stay behind. She’s not that kind of woman. She knows it’s a big step up for Sam, and that it’s important.’

  Rose clicked her tongue against her teeth, but it was not an impatient or angry sound. It was a marker that formed part of the discussion. It meant she was considering what she would say next and my husband, my foolish husband, waited, a smile on his lips, doting to the point of being offensive. ‘Difficult, Nathan. Jilly’s very settled in the village. Parish council, book club, and the school is perfect.’ Rose turned to Nathan and her hair tumbled over her shoulders. Nathan… Nathan reached over and tucked a tendril behind her ear.

  ‘It’s uncanny,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Frieda looks more like you each day.’

  Rose ignored the gesture, but she was pleased. ‘Do you think? She’s very special. Has she told you about the pink bike? Last time I went down, she and I conducted a ballet class. We leapt off armchairs and pointed our toes.’ She drank some wine.

  ‘Savour the merlot,’ he said, in a Russian accent, which made Rose laugh.

  ‘Don’t remind me of him,’ she said, and I had no idea who she meant. She tapped the glass. ‘This is nice, though. Did you buy it at the usual place?’

  I had an impression that I was gazing into one of those fairground mirrors, which, by their curvature, invert what they reflect. In theory, it should have been me sitting on the sofa, all cosy and intimate, Nathan’s hand resting behind my shoulder, and Rose should have been peering through the door like a prize snooper.

  I must have moved for they swung round. Immediately Nathan looked tense and reared back against the sofa, but Rose stayed where she was. I advanced into the room. ‘Since you ask, darling, the twins are fine.’ I sat down in the chair opposite them. ‘Have you sorted out whatever it was?’

  Rose got to her feet and smoothed her jacket. ‘Yes and no. I’m sure Nathan will tell you about it.’

  The ‘tell you about it’ was irritating but, under the circumstances, I had to let it pass. ‘I enjoyed the television programme, Rose. It was very good.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied simply. ‘It was, wasn’t it? Wé had a lot of fun making it. It came about by serendipity. I was mulling over the idea and Hal introduced me to a producer. It took a lot of haggling, and I had to persuade them I was the right person to front it, but we got there.’ She made a rueful moue, which invited me to enter into a solidarity with her. ‘Camera adds ten pounds, though. Not that one should mind.’

  I was trying not to stare at her too obviously. But I couldn’t avoid the conclusion that the woman standing before me was the model I had taken a lot of trouble to copy. Rose had worked through the messy bits of her life, and there she was, furnished and burnished with an electricity I was supposed to possess. Yet here I was, weighed down by minutiae, my lists, my children… and my husband. Then it occurred to me that hundreds of thousands of second wives had been faced with encounters such as this one, only to realize that what they had suspected was true: they had volunteered for the predicament of the younger sibling, who would never, ever catch up with the dazzling elder.

  ‘There might be a follow-up ser
ies,’ she was saying. ‘I had no idea… until…’ There was a frozen little silence. ‘Until I… I mean I’ve only just discovered how vast, diverse and wonderful the world is.’

  Nathan pulled himself to his feet and moved a fraction closer to Rose. ‘Don’t feel you have to go.’

  Rose knew Nathan. I knew Nathan. We both knew he was making a bad job of concealing that he ached with regret. If I had truly loved Nathan… if I had… this imperfect, humiliating pretence would have cut my heart in two.

  ‘Let us know,’ I said. We’ll make a point of watching.’

  Rose picked up the fashionable handbag and searched inside it. ‘Did I leave the keys in my coat? I shouldn’t do that – they’re always falling out. No, here they are.’ She managed to convey a sense of charming disorder that, nevertheless, would not inconvenience anyone.

  Nathan was completely taken and gazed, spellbound, down at her. ‘I’ll ring Sam tomorrow,’ he touched her arm, ‘and find out if he’s serious about this Texan job.’

  ‘I’m going to Italy tomorrow. Last minute, spur of the moment. Long weekend. Then I have a couple of pieces to write, which will take lots of research but they should be fun.’

  There was so much more about Rose that she could have told us. She had walked into number seven with a new history about which Nathan and I were largely ignorant. She could have told us about her intriguing new life. I live here. I work there. I had dinner with so-and-so. If I had been prepared, I could have dealt with it. I would even have wanted to hear it because I would have been able to make realistic comparisons, instead of the reverse.

  She placed her hands on Nathan’s shoulders and kissed his cheek lightly. ‘I’ll give you a ring next week. And, Nathan, about that other idea…’ the light caught the gloss on her hair and the sheen of her jacket ‘… let’s talk about that too.’

  Nathan’s hands clenched. ‘Yup.’ He stuffed his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. Suddenly I glimpsed the younger Nathan – the one who had swept the young Rose up from her disaster with Hal Thorne, married her, given her children and a domain she had guarded until I came along.