‘James, she’s pregnant. Well, we knew that –’
‘Yes, we did.’
‘It – it isn’t Oliver’s. She – she’s in love with someone else.’
‘Oh, right. So far I’m not bowled over with sympathy by this story.’
‘James, please. She never wanted to marry Oliver. She felt under tremendous pressure, poor darling. He was so passionately in love with her, and she thought she was with him. By the time she realized she’d made a mistake it was too late. Everything was planned, everyone was so happy, she didn’t have the heart to pull out.’
‘Well, bully for her.’
‘James, try to understand. You know how sensitive she is, how she can’t bear to hurt anyone. Well, early this year, she met this man in Paris. Fell passionately in love with him. She tried to break off with Oliver, but he was beside himself. She just didn’t have the heart to do it to him.’
‘Why didn’t she talk to us?’
‘She said she did try, again and again, but it always seemed impossible. The arrangements were going ahead so fast, we were all so excited, you’d spent so much money, and she just got deeper and deeper in the mire. I feel so dreadful, James, that she had no one to turn to, no one understood how desperate she was. What kind of a mother am I, to fail her like that? To make her think a wedding was more important than her happiness?’
‘A foolish, gullible one, I should think,’ said James, but a stab of hope, a faint stirring of relief was rising in him. Maybe, just maybe Cressida wasn’t so bad, maybe Julia had been lying, it was possible, maybe the letter had had nothing to do with it.
‘Anyway, early in May, she broke off with this man in Paris. His name was Gérard. Gérard –’ She looked down at a piece of paper in her hand; there was a name written on it, over and over again. ‘Gérard Renaud. He’s a writer of some kind. A journalist.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Anyway, she told him she had to do the right thing, go ahead, marry Oliver. She still didn’t realize she was pregnant then, you see. She thought she would be able to cope, that it was an infatuation she was going through, a sort of last fling, that she would settle down and be happy with Oliver. Gérard was heartbroken, but he understood. He went away, on some assignment his paper sent him on, to South Africa. He was gone for weeks. She couldn’t trace him.’
‘Not through the paper? How extraordinary.’
‘No. Oh, James, I don’t know. Stop putting me in the witness box. And when she discovered she was pregnant she just didn’t know what to do. She panicked, she arranged a termination but she couldn’t go through with it. Oh, James, why couldn’t she have come to us, why couldn’t we have been there for her?’
‘We were there for her,’ said James grimly.
‘Not enough. So then she – she told Oliver the baby was his.’
‘Poor old Oliver.’
‘Yes. Yes, that was bad of her. Of course I agree. But she was frightened, feeling so wretchedly unwell –’
‘Maggie, not even you should be falling for this garbage. And she didn’t look unwell –’
‘James, she was. She was so terribly pale, and tired-looking. And she has got very thin. You know the dress had to be taken in. We all thought it was exhaustion and nerves and of course all brides lose weight. I swear to you it isn’t garbage as you call it. You didn’t speak to her, you didn’t hear her voice. She was beside herself with remorse, with guilt – and there’s something else –’
‘Yes?’
‘Very late on the night before the wedding, this man – this Gérard – phoned her. I do remember a call. I was half asleep. He was back in Paris. He said he had to speak to her, he had something to tell her. Something dreadful, that she had to know.’
‘His story wasn’t going to be published? Oh all right, I’m sorry, what was it?’
‘He’s ill, James. I mean really ill. He has leukaemia. He’ll probably be dead in three months, certainly six. He told Cressida he wanted to see her just once more. He said he could wait until after the wedding but – well, that was the last straw, she said. She had to be with him, for the time they had left, had to let him know about their child, had to care for him.’
‘But Maggie –’
‘She said she felt she had absolutely no choice. She had to go. She said it was as if she became someone else, watching herself. She said she felt fate had stepped in and saved her from something she knew anyway was wrong, terribly wrong.’
‘So why couldn’t she have come to us, talked to us, told us what she was going to do? Spared us at least some of the misery, the anguish –’
‘I asked her that. She said she knew that if she even just began talking to us she’d find herself weakening, giving in. And she’d written the letter, don’t forget. I know it got lost, but she thought we’d find it much earlier and we wouldn’t be so worried. That wasn’t her fault.’
‘No,’ said James. ‘No, I suppose it wasn’t.’
His mind was whirling. Who should he believe? He wanted to believe Maggie, Cressida; the story was so wild, so absurd it almost made sense. Almost. On the other hand, it was very carefully constructed, perfectly designed to melt her mother’s heart. But then – what of Julia’s version? She surely wouldn’t have made that up. It was too checkable. The opposite of carefully constructed. But then, maybe – maybe Julia herself was mad. Knocked off-balance by a psychotically overprotective adoring father, herself overpossessive and protective of her own son. Josh had said himself she could hardly be described as well adjusted, was permanently in analysis. She might well have shown Cressida the letter and Cressida would simply have shrugged it off.
‘Did she –’ his voice cracked, he cleared his throat, started again – ‘did she say anything about Julia?’
‘Julia? No, why should she? What did Julia have to do with it?’
‘Oh,’ he said, his voice as casual as he could manage, ‘oh, nothing really. I just wondered. Julia said something about her seeming upset when she went up to say goodnight to her.’
‘Julia is about as perceptive as a rhinoceros,’ said Maggie. ‘I really don’t think she –’
‘No, all right. So what’s happened? Where is she?’
‘She’s at Gérard’s flat. In Paris. She’s alone, he’s gone back into hospital for more tests. She’s desperately worried, she just wanted to talk to me.’
‘I’d like to talk to her,’ said James grimly. ‘Give me the number, would you?’
‘No, James, I won’t.’
‘I’m sorry?’ He stared at her blankly. ‘Of course you must give it to me.’
‘No, I’m not going to. Not yet at any rate, until she’s settled down, come to terms with it all, feels a little better. I’m not having you upsetting her, making her feel worse, more guilty. She’s in a bad enough state already. Poor child.’
‘Maggie, she is not a child. At best she’s a mixed-up woman. I actually think she is rather worse than that –’
‘I knew you’d say that, think that,’ said Maggie. ‘That’s precisely why I have no intention of giving you the number.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. You’re crazy about that child. You always were. Could never see any harm in anything she did. Did you know she actually married this man yesterday?’
‘What?’
She faltered then, her mother’s faith plainly momentarily shattered.
‘She married him. Does that tally with her story about rushing off to a desperately sick boyfriend?’
‘James, that’s ridiculous. She can’t have done.’
‘She did.’
‘How do you know?’
‘There was a photograph of her somebody saw, running down the steps of Sacré-Coeur, presumably with him, wearing her wedding dress. Oh, she didn’t marry him there, of course –’
‘Oh, that,’ said Maggie. She was patently relieved. ‘Oh, it was just something they decided to do. She took her dress with her, and they went to Sacré-Coeur to ask a priest for a blessing.
She told me that. She wanted to do something to mark the day –’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said James, ‘this pantomime has gone on long enough – let’s leave it there. I’m terribly tired, Maggie, I can’t take much more of this.’ Just the same, the story was beginning to sound better, more feasible. The cracks in it were being filled. It didn’t excuse what Cressida had done but it made her less evil, less immoral.
‘But she’s not actually married,’ said Maggie. ‘She couldn’t be. There wasn’t time for them to arrange it. Anyway,’ – she stared at him – ‘how do you know all this?’
‘A photographer friend of Tilly Mills saw the picture at some newspaper where he was delivering his own pictures. Faxed it to Harriet last night.’
‘To Harriet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you seen it?’
‘Yes. And I went to Paris this morning –’
‘You went to Paris?’ Her face was grey with shock.
‘Yes, with Theo. We went in his plane. We went to Sacré-Coeur and found the priest who’d blessed them, as a matter of fact. I have to say he does confirm something of this story. He –’
‘And you didn’t tell me, neither of you did, that you went to Paris looking for Cressida, didn’t even show me the picture –?’
‘Maggie, you were asleep. Drugged. I was going to, of course I was. I didn’t know myself until about two this morning. What good would it have done to have woken you, upset you all over again? And we left here at four-thirty. I was back on English soil before you’d woken up, and then –’
‘It all sounds very par for the course, I have to say,’ said Maggie. She had an expression on her face James had not seen before: a hard, cool look, absolutely sure of herself, utterly in command. ‘Keep Maggie in the dark. Lie and keep on lying. Keep her out of it, and she’ll come to heel. Well finally, James, I won’t. I’m leaving you.’
‘Oh, don’t be absurd,’ said James. He hardly took the words in, they were just another set of Maggie’s histrionics.
‘Yes I am. I’d decided anyway, before all this. That as soon as the wedding was over I was going.’
‘Oh, Maggie, really. Of course you can’t go. What would I do without you, how could I –’
‘James, you’ll do fine without me. You’ll have exactly what you wanted. Freedom to do what you want, sort yourself out. Live with Susie if she’ll have you.’
‘Susie?’ said James. He had rehearsed this conversation in his head so often he was word-perfect. ‘Susie? What has Susie got to do with it?’
‘James, please. Don’t insult me. Don’t start play-acting.’
‘But Maggie –’
‘James, I know. Of course I know. And the way I feel right now, you’re very welcome to each other. Do what you fucking well like. I simply don’t care.’
It was the word fucking that made James realize she meant it. Maggie hated bad language, never swore; the harshest word he had ever heard on her lips had been bloody and that was only about once every five years and then under the most dire provocation. He stared at her, trying to take in what she was saying, absolutely silent. He could not have spoken if his life depended on it.
‘I hate you,’ she said simply. ‘I really do hate you. It’s a strong word, but that’s what I feel. For all these years you’ve made a fool of me. With your mistress, God how I hate her too, bloody Susie with her perfect figure and her lovely face, taking you away from me, poor fat stupid Maggie. Of course I knew, I knew quite quickly, and presumably you either thought I didn’t or I’d accept it for all the dubious benefits of having you as my husband. Well I did accept it, in a way, because I never made a fuss or threw wobbles. How could I? I’d have looked even more stupid. Everyone would have said poor old Maggie, how can she expect to keep a husband like James, behaving like that? And I had the girls to think of, and they both adored you. I couldn’t have broken things up before.’
James looked at her. She had changed. Overnight she had changed. She was still Maggie, still fat, still awkward, and she was pale and tired-looking, but she had clearly washed her hair, and she had put on a nice dress, and even some make-up. She was a pretty woman, still; her plumpness had safeguarded her face, she had fewer lines, her skin was fresher and younger-looking than most of her contemporaries’, and her eyes, large, black-lashed eyes, so like Cressida’s, were still a clear cornflower blue. He felt an odd rush of panic at the thought of her leaving; he didn’t love her but he needed her, she was important to him, to his life.
‘Don’t talk like this,’ he said finally. ‘I hate it.’
‘Well, that’s very unfortunate for you, James, but I’m afraid you’ll just have to hate it. I need to explain, to tell you what I’m doing and why.’
‘You mustn’t go,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t leave. It’s a terrible idea. Go and see Cressida if you must, but come back.’
‘Why, James? I really don’t see why.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘because we’re married. We’ve been married a long time. And we –’
‘No we haven’t,’ said Maggie, ‘not what I call married. I’ve run the house and looked after the children and organized our social life and seen to your laundry and so on, but we haven’t been married. We haven’t slept together for years – no, James, we haven’t. Well, hardly ever, and when we do I hate it, because I know you think it’s time and you ought to and you’re thinking about Susie –’
‘Maggie, please – this isn’t fair.’
‘It’s perfectly fair. I don’t even blame you for it, I’m just explaining why it’s not a marriage. We don’t talk, we don’t ever go out on our own, not even to the cinema, we don’t do anything together, except have meals, and then I know you’re watching me, thinking I eat too much.’
‘Maggie, I don’t –’
‘Yes you do. And thinking about Susie and her bloody perfect figure, and the way she takes care of herself and watches what she eats and –’
‘When did you find out about her? How?’ he said, curious in spite of himself.
‘Oh – very early on. I suppose before Rufus was born.’
James held his breath. Did she know about that, had she suspected?
‘I used to wonder about Tom, you know,’ she said conversationally, ‘fantasize that maybe he was yours. But he does look so exactly like Alistair, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said James, relief flooding hard into his lungs, ‘yes, of course he does. What an extraordinary idea.’
‘Not really. These things do happen. And I did so long for a boy, for more children, it seemed just the kind of thing that would have happened. But I suppose if Susie had been going to have your child she would have had an abortion. Not gone ahead with it. She’s hardly the maternal type, is she?’
James didn’t answer. He couldn’t defend Susie; it would be too dangerous.
‘I tried to ignore it, to tell myself I was being neurotic, that you were just flirting with her because she was so lovely and everything I wasn’t, but I could see. I watched you together, and I listened to your excuses for being away, and I went through your wallet for clues, and checked up on you both occasionally, phoned your flat or your secretary, and then her home, and you were always missing together. Or the answering machine at the flat was on when I knew you were there. I used to sit and listen to your voice saying you were out, while I knew you must be in bed with her, making love to her, and I hated you so much for a while I wanted to kill you. I actually thought about it sometimes. Well, not really of course, but I did occasionally wonder about poisoning your food. Or hers.’
‘Why did you never say anything? I can’t understand it.’
‘Because,’ she said simply, ‘I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. I knew you wouldn’t give her up, whatever I said, and I knew I didn’t want a divorce. Not when the girls were young. So I just waited. Hurt and cried and ate a lot and waited. Until now. And it’s been worth it. It’s been worth it just to have this conversation, James. I’ve
really enjoyed it.’
‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘oh, Maggie, I’m so sorry.’
‘What for?’ she said in genuine puzzlement. ‘Whatever for?’
‘For hurting you so much.’
‘James, really! You wouldn’t have stopped it though, would you? Even if you’d known how much it hurt.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I might have tried.’
‘James, you wouldn’t. You’re too absolutely selfish. And too much in love with her, I suppose. Well, it doesn’t hurt me any more. I don’t give a toss. I really really don’t. She’s very welcome to you. And you’ll be able to have her now. To marry her. If you want her.’
James said nothing, just stared out of the window.
‘Anyway,’ said Maggie brightly, ‘I’m lucky. Just when I thought I was really going to be on the scrap heap, I have a role to play again. Cressida needs me, and that’s wonderful.’
‘What? You’re going to go and live with her, in Paris, with this man? Do you really think that’s a good idea?’
‘No, I won’t live with them, of course I won’t. What a very low opinion you must have of me, James. I’m not that stupid. I shall get a little flat near London, Putney, Wimbledon, somewhere like that, I’ve still got friends there, and I’ll rebuild my life. I’ve been planning it for quite a long time. Cressida wants me to go and visit, meet Gérard, so when the baby arrives I shall maybe go and stay with her, and when – well, when she’s alone, she can decide where she wants to be. And where she wants me to be.’
‘So you really believe this story?’ said James. He had shut his mind to Maggie’s announcement for a while; his consciousness had closed down, he simply couldn’t cope with any more.
‘Yes, I believe it. Of course I do. Why shouldn’t I? I’m a truthful person, James. Unlike you. I recognize and respect it in others. Or is there something else you know that I don’t?’
‘No,’ said James hastily, ‘no, there isn’t.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m going now. I’m just sorting out a few clothes.’
‘You’re going today?’ said James. ‘Where, how?’
‘I’m going to stay with an old nursing friend, in Guildford. That will be convenient for my house-hunting. Sarah Jennings, you know?’ He nodded silently. ‘You never liked her. She never liked you either,’ she added. ‘She’s delighted at my decision. Anyway, she’s on her own, her husband died last year, and she says I can stay as long as I like. And then, as I say, I shall be available for Cressida as and when she wants me. Don’t look like that, James. She’s very upset and frightened. Waiting for the results of these tests on – on Gérard. I feel I’ve failed her enough. Quite enough. Now then, I’ll need some money from you, of course, and I think I’ve earned it, but I don’t want either this house or the flat. I’ll come and say goodbye before I go.’
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