A Loving Mistress

by Rosemary Friedman

  Towards the end of October, the summer for once had been unseasonably prolonged, I walked on the decaying leaves alone in our garden where now, among the trees, there were hints of autumn, tints of autumn, sand, yellow ochre and gold. Passion was dead, Kalahari dying and Madame Louise Laperrière hanging her scarlet head. I had seen little of Victor. Molly was in her last weeks and at night he hurried home to her; his lunch hours were preoccupied with work. I wallowed in my solitary state, blaming it on Molly, and longed only for the wretched child, about whom I was tired of hearing, to be born. She was having it at home, where a maternity nurse waited in readiness, and Victor never left the house without expecting at any moment to be summoned back. When he was with me he was nervous and irritable and though I was pleased to see him, for however short a time, I would rather almost he had stayed with Molly, together with his mind. Afterwards he said, after the baby, we would go away. Sometimes I felt quite sorry for him, me pulling in one direction, Molly in the other, the ever present problems of United Industries and the insistent demands of his widespread business interests. He thrived on it of course. Men like Victor always did. He did not need my pity. I don’t know when it was that I realized he always had to have two of everything; not only women. Two cars, one of which stayed in the garage, two winter overcoats, one of which did not move from the cupboard in my hall, two secretaries, Miss Johnstone and Mrs Hicks, two tennis rackets, two leather golf bags – he even belonged to two country clubs although he rarely played at either – two solicitors and two accountants occupied themselves with his affairs. When he shopped he bought two ties, two shirts; it was as if everything, other than life itself, came only in pairs.

  I asked him about it but he shrugged his shoulders, dismissing it as nonsense. I had not expected anything else.

  The seats, including ours, were damp and empty; the quacking of the ducks anguished for the summer visitors who had gone. Two portly ladies in almost identical shapeless tweed coats were feeding them from a shared bag in silent amity. I passed Cheshire Life, still proudly upright, like scarlet soldiers, and thought Victor would have been pleased, not liking his loved ones to die, then felt the pain, taking me by surprise, searing through my lower abdomen.

  I had always been healthy and prided myself on it, as if it were in my control, or made me in some way morally superior to those who were always snuffling and sneezing, taking pills and potions for various aches and pains. Apart from the childhood illnesses from which according to my mother, I invariably made speedy and uncomplicated recoveries, I don’t remember ever having to stay in bed because of indisposition. I had certainly never been hospitalized.

  By the time I got home, not knowing how I managed to get there, I was freezing cold, sweating profusely and afraid. The pain in my abdomen was sharp and insistent and I tried to remember my general medicine and to come up with a diagnosis. Of course the most obvious one was appendicitis but there was something about the severity and constancy of the pain that was inconsistent. I lay on the bed in my coat clutching my belly and moaning, partly with self-pity. I had never felt so bad in my entire life and after half an hour of rolling around I knew I must do something about it.

  I did not have a doctor, never having needed one. If I had ever had any queries in the past concerning my physiology I had always taken them to the appropriate colleagues in the hospital. Sophie had a GP whose name escaped me so I dialled her flat. I let it ring, panicking now, and needing desperately to hear a human voice. But of course Sophie was at work. I didn’t think I had the strength to make another call. The pain was so bad I felt that I was losing consciousness, sinking into an abyss. I clung to the bedside table feeling the sharp edge of it bite into my hand. I thought I was dying. I wanted to die. The pain was intolerable, unendurable. I vomited inelegantly over the bed and was desperately afraid, at the same time a little outside myself, thinking that it wasn’t happening to me.

  I managed to dial Victor’s number. Miss Johnstone answered. Mr Pattison had been called away. Until further notice. His wife was in labour. Would I care to ring him at home?

  I hadn’t the strength to replace the receiver. It lay on my stomach. I was shivering, crying, and could not work out what to do. I managed to stay conscious for long enough to realize that the pain was not going to get better by itself, not going to go away. I rang for an ambulance. They kept making me repeat my address and I told them to hurry. I was convinced that I would die before they came. My thoughts were wild; of isolation, self-pity and death. Would Victor be desolate? How would he know? Was this a punishment for taking him away from Molly? If I lived, how sympathetic I would be to those in pain. The ‘Ice-Bank’ would melt and I would soothe the fevered brows of those who suffered. I would no longer remain aloof, detached, clinical. I had not known such torment existed and needed desperately to share it with another human being, anything, anybody, only not to be alone. In my agony, in my hour of need, I backtracked on all my beliefs, all my convictions, and called upon God not to let me die.

  I think I did lose consciousness for a while. The ambulance siren broke into it and I struggled to the surface, trying to get on top of the pain and remain there. I wondered, stupidly, if they would find anywhere to park. There was a knocking at my door, urgent, repetitive, and I waited for someone to answer it wishing they’d hurry up about it. The knocking grew louder and I remembered there was nobody. I shouted out and crawled to the door, my tears falling onto the carpet.

  Apart from the pain I remembered voices, kind, reassuring, and swaying faces, footsteps and curtains, the clink of metal and a child crying. Fingers prodded my belly. I screamed at their intrusion. They seemed not to know about the pain. I opened my mouth to tell them but only a croak emerged. Someone in a white coat plunged a needle into my arm. Faces on a merry-go-round spun above me then all was still.

  ‘Who’s Victor?’ a voice said. ‘She keeps asking for him. Fifty milligrams of Pethidine…’

  ‘Haven’t a clue…’

  ‘Raise the foot of the bed please…’

  ‘A hundred over sixty…’

  ‘Give her a bottle of whole blood…’

  ‘We’re going to see the French film at the Classic…’

  ‘Have you been to coffee?…’

  ‘She keeps asking for Victor…’

  ‘Open your eyes Doctor Banks. It’s all over!…’

  All – over – all – over – all – over – all – over. All over.

  There was no one in the room. A side room. No pain. They had taken it away. I was not dead.

  ‘Gave us a terrible fright,’ my mother said.

  She had brought chrysanthemums from the garden, bronze and mauve. I hate chrysanthemums. They make the water smell.

  ‘Will they see to them or shall I…?’

  ‘Leave them.’

  ‘I could ask for a vase. They’re almost finished now. The garden’s a mess. You look terribly pale. Daddy’s coming tomorrow. And Jennie.’

  ‘Not like you, Jean,’ my father said. ‘Had us worried.’

  He put a bottle of Eau de Lanvin on the table. He had taken it from stock.

  ‘Does Victor know?’ I asked Jennie.

  ‘No visitors. Not till next week.’

  ‘A girl,’ Victor said. ‘Lucy. Why are you crying?’

  ‘We wondered what had happened to you.’ Bob stared at his feet. ‘Hurry up and get better.’

  ‘Sixteen hours in labour. Looks like Molly.’

  ‘Who are those white flowers from? Aren’t they gorgeous! I made you some beef tea. Get your strength up.’

  ‘The boys are tickled pink.’

  ‘Hallo Sophie. Gave us all a fright didn’t she? When Jean does something she does it properly. No half measures.’

  ‘Don’t cry, darling. You mustn’t cry. I’ll take you away.’

  We didn’t go away. Because when Molly got out of bed, after the baby, after Lucy, she couldn’t walk. She’d lost the use of her legs. Or so she said. In our grey garden, hudd
led in my sheepskin coat, I walked slowly, leaning on Victor.

  A solitary group of men in berets, hands behind their backs, discussed Nietzsche.

  ‘They can’t find anything organic. She’s seen three people. I can’t leave her.’

  He carried her everywhere. She waited until he came home.

  Pigeons, splay clawed, twitching their heads, pecked among the cola tabs and cigarette ends for food. A circle of twigs in newly turned earth waited for spring.

  As soon as I was strong enough I went to Shotmere. Alone. There were white flowers waiting for me in my room.

  I wondered if it was a coincidence that Molly had the baby and I the pain on the same day. At the same time almost. The diagnosis was peritonitis after what must have been a silent attack of appendicitis. It was a nasty, messy job. Before antibiotics I would not have lived. For days following the operation I felt so weak, so ill, I doubted I would.

  One afternoon my mother and Jennie came unexpectedly to the hospital when Victor was there. Jennie had taken Kate to the orthodontist and brought mother with her for the ride.

  Victor was in the armchair which he vacated for my mother.

  I introduced him.

  ‘This is Mr Palmer.’

  Mother gave him one of her old-fashioned looks.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’

  Victor’s photograph was quite often in the newspapers and he had appeared on television.

  ‘Mr Palmer is a gynaecologist,’ I said wildly.

  Jennie, who of course knew, had an attack of the giggles.

  ‘I was hoping you might have been a boyfriend,’ mother said, loosening her coat, in her inimitably tactless way.

  She leaned towards Victor. ‘It’s time Jean settled down. Someone keeps sending her these lovely flowers.’ She looked round the room at the vases filled with them. ‘Not that I care for white flowers. They remind me of funerals. She won’t tell anyone who they’re from. Jean never was one to give anything away. I think she has a secret admirer.’

  Jennie looked at her watch. She realized that my time with Victor was precious and that mother was about to treat him to some embarrassing story concerning my past.

  ‘Kate will be waiting.’

  ‘We’ve only just come,’ mother objected, but she buttoned her coat again and arranged the scarf at her neck.

  She was still looking at Victor.

  ‘You don’t belong to Rotary?’

  ‘Afraid not,’ Victor said.

  ‘Never mind.’ Mother heaved herself out of the chair. ‘It will come to me.’

  ‘I think he’s super,’ Jennie said. She was driving me down to Shotmere for my convalescence. ‘And he adores you. Mother was so busy trying to decide where she’d seen him before that she didn’t notice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How he feels about you. The room was full of it. It’s a pity he’s married. Perhaps…’

  ‘No chance.’ I looked out at the frozen countryside feeling every movement of the car, every bump in the road in my recent wound.

  After the operation. After Lucy was born. I had thought there might be. A chance. I behaved very badly. I was debilitated and depressed and not responsible for what I was doing. Mother wanted me to go home so that she could look after me – egg custards and keeping visitors at bay – but if I had I would not have seen Victor. I went back to my flat against everyone’s advice, ‘you imagine you’re stronger than you are,’ and struggled with the phone and the doorbell and making hot and cold drinks and plates of cornflakes which was about all I could manage. Sophie came nearly every day with soup in coffee jars which was welcome, and left-over lasagne and osso buco which I couldn’t eat. She did my washing and Jennie came with Trevor and Bob with his girlfriend and just about everyone else I knew bringing flowers, which I was too feeble to arrange, and sympathy. After they’d gone I wept tears of exhaustion and wished I had gone home to mother, to the spare bedroom where she would cosset me. The mood passed when Victor came, which was not often enough for me in the state I was in. Usually I cried, unable to tell him why, not knowing myself really, and clinging to him when I knew he had to go home to Molly and the baby.

  He was not very good in sickrooms; jumping up and down restlessly which made me nervous. He made tea and put six spoons into the tiny pot; attempted to straighten the bed when I was in the bathroom, tucking both sheets into the mattress so that there was nothing to slide between. He was so anxious to do things for me and I found his solicitude touching. Whatever pretensions I had had towards independence disappeared completely in the post-operative period. I wanted Victor to stay with me. For ever. For him always to be there.

  I was in bed and he was sitting in the chair with the evening paper.

  ‘Why will you never leave Molly?’

  ‘I promised,’ he said from behind the paper. ‘In sickness and in health.’

  ‘Nobody takes any notice of that, these days.’

  ‘She needs me.’

  ‘I need you.’

  He put down the paper. ‘I need you. You know that.’

  ‘I mean always. All the time.’

  He got up and came to sit on the bed taking my hand.

  ‘She needs me more than ever.’

  He meant because of her legs.

  ‘She’s doing it deliberately.’ It was something I had long wanted to say.

  Victor looked uncomfortable.

  ‘You said yourself there was nothing organic.’

  ‘She can’t walk.’

  ‘She could if she wanted to. If she had to. I’d like for us to get married. To be together all the time.’

  I loved him, sitting there with his tired, troubled face, so much. It wasn’t fair.

  ‘It isn’t possible.’

  ‘You haven’t really thought about it.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Have you?’

  I could see that he hadn’t.

  ‘I want to be your wife.’

  He looked at me. ‘You are.’

  ‘Properly.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  I looked at his face and, depressed as I was feeling, hadn’t the courage to say divorce Molly. I knew what the response would be.

  ‘You must please yourself. I’m fed up with this part-time arrangement.’ I thought if I put the screws on him…

  He withdrew his hand and went to look out of the window. ‘Unfortunately one can’t always do that in this life.’

  ‘Would you marry me? If you were free?’

  I watched his troubled back, knowing the answer.

  ‘Molly would be all right. I know you’d leave her well provided for. She could have nurses. Night and day.’

  ‘What about the children?’

  ‘You would see them.’ I thought he was considering the matter. ‘It must be a strain living two lives.’

  ‘I can’t leave Molly.’ The phrase ran like a refrain through my life.

  ‘If she wasn’t sick?’

  ‘She is sick.’

  ‘If she wasn’t?’

  His back was rigid, motionless, silhouetted against the curtain and the sky which was grey with impending snow. I knew he was considering his other life. His life with Molly in Virginia Water, his house and garden and his neighbours. The children, William and Tristan and Gavin and the new baby, Lucy. I had to admit that he was well entrenched. That it didn’t sound terribly practical. But it happened. All the time. People did get divorced. It wasn’t fair that I should fall in love with a man who would not contemplate it.

  ‘Would you let Molly consult Richard?’

  ‘She’s seen psychiatrists.’

  ‘Richard is special.’

  ‘You should have married him. Poor Jean.’

  ‘I don’t need your pity!’ I began to cry, tears that were now never very far away. He had touched me on the raw. I felt sorry for myself. I was angry with him. Because I hadn’t got anywhere about Molly.

  He was upset that
he had made me cry.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘I suppose Molly will be waiting for you.’ I deliberately misunderstood him.

  He looked puzzled. ‘I didn’t think you minded. About Molly.’

  Men were so stupid at times. Believing what we say. Of course I minded. I hated her. Had I been a witch I might have stuck pins into her image. At the same time, seeing her through Victor’s eyes, I loved her, pitied her. Then again she was not my problem. Like all women I was a mass of inconsistencies, a spaghetti junction of conflicting feelings which varied according to my mood which in turn was manipulated by my biology.

  Richard saw her. Against his principles – he saw all his patients at the Tavvy. He went down to Virginia Water three times. Afterwards I called at the house in Maida Vale to talk to him. His study, high-ceilinged and book-lined – Karl Abraham and Reik – looked out over the garden in which a doll’s pram had been left to rust in the snow. The lay analyst, very pregnant, brought coffee and ran an intimate finger along the back of Richard’s neck when she left the tray. I hated her. And her pregnancy. My illness had released all kinds of emotions whose existence I had repressed. The ‘Ice-Bank’ was developing deep chasms of unwelcome feelings.

  ‘Well,’ I asked Richard. ‘What’s really the matter with Molly?’

  ‘You know I can’t discuss that.’

  ‘Can you help her?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. It certainly won’t be easy. I’m prepared to try. I’d have to treat her as an in-patient.’