A Loving Mistress

by Rosemary Friedman

  I think we had been together for about five years when Victor invited me to the Annual General Meeting of United Industries. Each September, even if I forgot the date, I recognized the signs of its approach. A restlessness in Victor. A lack of attention to anything I might say. A preoccupation with the account he was going to give of himself, of his company, to the shareholders. We were like Amneris and Aida. While I spoke of anxieties in the lab as to whether our internal standards of prothrombin times were the same as the Reference Standards, and a strange epidemic of malaria which we were seeing, Victor muttered, making notes, about Group Turnover, Profit before Taxation, Dividends and Net Tangible Assets.

  I was doing the crossword. Trying to think of ‘an unusually early bird’ in five letters, when he said:

  ‘Why don’t you come to the AGM?’

  It was one of the rare occasions when Molly ventured out. She came with her mother and brought the boys – the two older ones at any rate – making it a kind of family occasion. At first I thought what a stupid idea of Victor’s. How could I? Later, why not? I would have a good look at Molly while she, in her ignorance, would not of course see me. It seemed like cheating. More of a deception than just being Victor’s mistress. As if I were taking unfair advantage of her. Looking through a two-way mirror. I wondered how I would feel. The photographs provoked very little in the way of response. Would I be angry, jealous, gloating, ashamed; would it affect my relationship with Victor? The one emotion I did not expect to feel was love. I was able, for a moment, to identify with Victor. It quite took the wind out of my sails.

  Smoke hung, like pale grey lace, over the crowd in the Great Room of Grosvenor House. Victor could not have been pleased. Executives in city suits with names like Frank and Brian, shouting to make themselves heard, greeted each other with enthusiasm beneath the crystal chandeliers. Some, with document-cases, chased others with clipboards. A few men in raincoats and women with shopping bags seemed to have wandered in from the street. I caught glimpses of Victor hailing this one, catching another by the arm, his forehead furrowed with anxiety. I longed to speak to him but could not cross the barrier of taboo.

  Apart from a brief smile when he first saw me he rarely looked in my direction; he was either too busy or did not trust himself to do so. I had the impression that I was visible, vulnerable; that everyone knew who I was but of course they did not. The only person to speak to me was Romilly.

  I did not care for Romilly. I found him supercilious. Victor said it was just his manner and it may well have been, but I always felt that he was looking down on me – physically, of course, he was, over six feet tall – judging me. He was the kind of man who had little respect for women and acted as if they existed solely for his delight.

  We had little to say to each other since he had put his hand up my skirt at a party Victor had taken me to and I had slapped his face. He had looked amazed, hurt, as if because I was Victor’s mistress I was no better than I should be and was assuming a false modesty.

  I saw him elbowing his way towards me.

  ‘And how’s Jean?’ He looked down through half-closed eyes into which the smoke from his cigarette drifted.

  I resented the implied superiority of the third person and tried to control my irritation. He blew out a circle of smoke. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure…?’

  ‘I’m a shareholder.’ I was annoyed with myself for answering so defensively.

  ‘Yes,’ he drawled. ‘You would be.’

  He made me feel cheap, dirty, dishonest, kept. Victor said it was my imagination. He had a blind spot as far as Romilly was concerned. I was saved any further comment because he was looking over my shoulder towards the door.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘there’s Molly.’

  I would have recognized her. From the photographs. The camera of course does not tell the truth. It portrayed Molly’s looks, her soft blonde hair, her blue eyes, but it did not reproduce – how could it – her charisma, her air of helplessness, of being alone in an alien world, her fragility, yet her build was not fragile. She had the boys with her, Tristan and William, holding their hands as if without them she would fall. I could see her mother behind her, and how Molly would look in middle age, and that her eyes searched the room for Victor, needing to cling to him before she drowned in the sea of faces. A dozen men, like lifeboats, went towards her; towards Circe; they could not help themselves. Whatever thoughts, hopes, I had entertained, that Victor some day might leave her, were immediately discounted. I had to stop myself from being carried on the tide that swept towards her.

  As soon as Victor saw her he laid a hand of excuse on the sleeve of the man he was talking to and made his way towards her. The unmistakable look of pleasure she gave him elicited an expression on Victor’s face I was not familiar with, a mixture of tenderness and concern such as one might have for a loved one who was sick. For the first time, seeing that look, I was jealous. Not that she was married to Victor, I did not want at that time to be married, but that she had the power to evoke such a response. I thought I had had moments of jealousy before, when Molly had first claim on him, but it was as nothing to the consuming resentment I felt within me now. I was ashamed of myself for wanting to strike her down, open the ground beneath her, annihilate her, while at the same time understanding Victor’s feeling for her. I watched him kiss her, taking her hand in his hands as one might a child, then kiss the upturned faces of the boys.

  ‘I was best man at their wedding,’ Romilly said unnecessarily, watching me watching them. I had forgotten he was there.

  They sat at the top table; the Board of Directors, with Victor in the middle, behind the tumblers and the water jugs, their pencils and sheets of paper. They appeared nervous. Some of them bit their nails as they watched us, the shareholders, file into our seats. I sat behind Molly. If I reached out my hand I could have touched her. William turned round once and stared at me, almost as if he knew, but of course he was just bored and seeking distraction. He looked like Victor, the uncompromising eyes, frightening almost in one so young, the air of command, of the natural leader. Tristan was Molly, timid, uncertain. Molly had one hand in his; with the other she fiddled with her scarf. When everyone had been seated Victor banged on the table with the gavel. It was another Victor. The Victor that took over when he switched off from me. I was sure that throughout the whole proceedings he saw neither Molly nor me.

  It was dull of course. The Auditor’s Report, ‘…we have examined the financial statements…those in favour?…those against?…carried.’ Bang. The Report of the Directors, ‘…those in favour?…those against?…carried.’ Bang.

  There was a rustle in expectation of the Chairman’s Statement then Victor stood up to enthusiastic, encouraging applause. Molly’s face, like a sunflower, was open with love.

  ‘It gives me great pleasure…’ Victor said, taking off his glasses.

  Later he wore bi-focals. We laughed about it. About getting old and that it couldn’t happen to us. His eyes had always been weak, even as a child. He wore his glasses always, except in bed, where the lack of them gave his face, especially around the eyes, an unfinished appearance. He once spoke of contact lenses but never found the time to get round to it. He was not a vain man. I followed his every word – Mining, Hotels, Textiles – there seemed not a field in which he was not involved – Warehousing, Engineering, Property, although I did not know what he was talking about. When he faltered my heart stopped, when he searched for a word I searched with him. I wondered if Molly was doing the same. I watched the Board of Directors, wondering which was Jordan who fought Victor’s every decision, which Stanley, a weak link carried by the rest. Enmity, dissatisfaction, jealousy, there might have been, but their faces as they leaned on their elbows listening showed nothing but respect.

  There was a photograph of Victor in the front of the shiny brochure we had found on our seats. It was a dead thing compared with the man, on his toes as usual, who stood before us.

  He sat down to a casca
de of applause in which I joined, then looked at Molly for approval.

  At Molly. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed where I was sitting. Victor, I called silently, Victor. Then thought he could scarcely single me out with his eyes. Not with everyone watching. I told myself there was no other reason.

  There was a special luncheon for the Directors of the Company and their families. They shuffled towards a far door while I made my way out with the hoi-polloi. The last I saw of Molly was her slow progress, as if before her there were quicksands she must avoid, in the direction of the luncheon. Victor was at her elbow.

  ‘I hadn’t thought she’d be like that,’ I said to Victor.

  ‘Like what?’

  I thought. Of course I meant alive. Before she had been a cypher, a report, an image on bromide paper, not someone who felt, spoke, was consumed with nervousness and in her anxiety put on eyeshadow which was too blue.

  ‘So…’ I could not say what I wanted to say. Not without upsetting Victor. It was a mistake to have gone to the Annual General Meeting.

  We had made love and it hadn’t been very good. I had been angry because of Molly, because of her existence which before had been merely a figment in my imagination, capable of being dismissed at will. I kept fancying scenes in which she figured; in bed with Victor, close although not with passion, as in an old movie; at the breakfast table, although I knew she did not get up for it; in the bath, with her pale skin and blonde hair. Victor was looking at me, puzzled. Men were simplistic. They could not follow the tortuous intricacies of a woman’s mind; that before Friday Molly had existed but did not exist; that I was free to imagine her dull, ugly, selfish, deploying every deceitful ruse to hold Victor to her.

  ‘Tell me about her,’ I said. I suddenly wanted to know everything. To embrace the sound, the smell, the feel, the essence of her as Victor did. Perhaps to winkle out something to hate, something that I could cling to.

  He told me how they had met, in Cambridge, through Romilly who had brought her to a May Ball. They had fallen in love at once and married as soon as Victor came down with his First in Mathematical Statistics. They had been happy despite Molly’s dislike of bed. Victor had thought it would only be a question of time. He had laughed at her fears of dogs, of spiders, of lifts and department stores, of tunnels and of bridges. It had corroborated his manliness to help her through them, over them. Until they became a nuisance and over the years the joke wore thin and Victor, desperate, sent her for treatment. He told me of her skills, painting and drawing, her passion for reading, her mind which was like a sponge. I wanted to hear what she did, what she said, for him to lay bare their intimate moments. I wanted him to pin her on the dissecting table of my mind, flat and vulnerable, so that I could rub her out.

  ‘She’s going to have another child,’ Victor said.

  We were in our garden. A pair of pintails waddled before my eyes. I tried to concentrate on them, on the black and white, to stop my mind from disintegrating.

  I was sitting close to Victor on our seat but a wall of glass had come coldly between us.

  ‘I thought…’ I said.

  ‘About once every two years. It was Romilly’s birthday. After the champagne.’

  I wished I’d had some bread to throw to the pintails. Something to distract me.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘For quite a while. It won’t make any difference.’

  I looked at him. He really believed it. The wall of glass became a world. Of life in Virginia Water. Of gardens with prams beneath the trees. Of babies in nurseries. Of families, united and close. He had not the least idea that I was shocked, floored, destroyed, gasping for breath, drowning. Another self asked when it would be born, was Molly pleased, what about the other children? He told me Molly, dying for a daughter, was ecstatic, the boys keen to have a sister. I knew that Victor was more happy than he dared to appear.

  ‘I’m glad I’ve told you,’ he said, sitting forward, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, ‘I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.’

  I was crying but the rage was inside me. He turned to see the bright smile on my face. I noticed that the hair was greying above his ears. That Victor was beginning to age.

  I tried to analyse why I minded so much and why, if I minded, I had to hide it from Victor. It certainly was not because I wanted a child of my own. I had, after all, destroyed the one he had given me. Perhaps it was the fear that the birth would bring him closer to Molly at my expense, but he was close already. I supposed, when it boiled down, that it was plain, old fashioned jealousy once again – not a comfortable emotion at the best of times – for something I did not have but did not want.

  The day after Victor dropped his bombshell he left for Brazil. I took my hurt, my insane resentment, back to our garden but refused to look at the roses. Club Elegance and All Gold, Dearest and Matangi; I wanted nothing to do with them. A gardener, hoeing, smiled. I pretended not to see. From Emily Longford’s seat I watched a woman sketching. She was standing up absorbed in what she was doing.

  A broad, familiar back was handing small pieces of bread from a paper bag to a child who was throwing it to the ducks. Trying to throw it. She put her hand behind her head and, stretching up on her toes, flung it forward. It landed not in the water but about two inches away from her brown sandals where it was snapped up by the pigeons. When he squatted beside her, helping her, holding her arm in its cardigan with paternal tenderness, I recognized Richard. The child, a girl of about two, was the image of him, she wore shorts and a striped tee-shirt and had curly brown hair like Richard. I sat for a long time deciding whether to say hallo. The bag was well filled with bread and I could see that they would be there for some time. I wanted to pick up the child and to hug it, its rounded limbs from a Rubens painting, because it was Richard’s and once I had loved him; but I did not want to take it home, cope with its tantrums over food it refused to eat, go through the physical trauma of the bath, read the bedtime story; spend my evening alerted for its cries, arise with panaceas in the night. Motherhood was a choice. I had made mine. Getting up I walked over to them.

  ‘Richard?’

  Still squatting he squinted up at me, the sun in his eyes. ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine. This is Melanie.’

  Melanie Klein. Trust Richard.

  ‘Say hallo, Melanie!’

  The child examined me silently.

  ‘She’s shy,’ Richard said. ‘It’s a phase. What are you doing these days, Jean?’

  ‘I’m in private practice now. You?’

  ‘Still at the Tavvy. Irene’s an analyst. She works from home. We live in Maida Vale.’ He gave a piece of bread to the child watching in case she went too near the water.

  ‘We often come here. To feed the ducks.’

  I saw him glance at my hand for a ring.

  ‘Are you still…?’

  I nodded.

  He could think of no appropriate comment so turned his attention again to the child.

  For a crazy moment I imagined she was mine, that the three of us were together, feeding the ducks, that I had married Richard and shortly we’d go cosily home for tea. To my surprise, I still found him attractive but when he looked up at me again it was as to a stranger. He clearly belonged to Melanie and to Irene.

  I felt suddenly dejected. Victor was in Brazil, Molly was carrying his child and I no longer figured in Richard’s scheme of things.

  I looked at my watch although there was nothing I must do. I wanted to get away.

  ‘Nice bumping into you, Jean.’

  ‘And you.’

  ‘Say “bye-bye”.’

  The child ignored him.

  ‘Bye Melanie.’

  She gave an almighty heave and managed to land her piece of bread in the water where it attracted a flotilla of ducks.

  The mood of dejection did not go away. I knew it had to do with Molly’s baby and my own pathological jealousy. It wasn’t helped by t
he fact that from May onwards I saw much less of Victor.

  Molly’s pregnancy had exacerbated her phobias and she developed a new one. That the child would be born deformed, handicapped either physically or mentally. She needed constant reassurance from Victor and did not want him to leave her side. From the fourth to the ninth month we went away only once; for a long weekend; back to the Lakes.

  Sometimes I marvelled that there could be so many variations of colour, so many hues, tints, shades and tinges, so many depths and shadows, so much intensity, richness, vividness and brightness. I mean of course the roses. Occasionally, using the elbow grease of my mind, I tried for my own satisfaction to distinguish between them; Lady Johnson, salmon pink, Ginger Rogers, pretty pink, Softly Softly, like the rouged cheeks of an ageing actress and Silver Jubilee reverting for its centre to apricot. I think I liked the pinks and the oranges – Orange Sensation and Orient Express – best. Victor, single-minded as always, did not deviate from Madame Louise Laperrière. He acknowledged Summer Holiday and Cheshire Life, favouring the reds, but would stand for ages drinking in the crimson splendour of his Gallic love. Sometimes we argued, to pass the time, about the respective merits of Violinista Costa and Royal Salute, or Rosa Zigeuner and Joseph’s Coat. Often I day-dreamed that we had a real garden, Victor and I, and that it was filled with roses. In the spring he would bring me the first, in bud, and in December the final, frost-defying survivor of the cold.