An Unsuitable Marriage

by Colette Dartford

‘You’re right. It’s no excuse.’ She took another drink, almost emptying her glass, and her shoulders dropped a bit, as if she was beginning to relax.

  ‘I felt like a failure,’ he said. ‘I am a failure.’

  ‘Self-pity? Really, Geoffrey?’

  ‘Sorry. Did I mention I was pathetic too?’

  ‘You didn’t need to. I worked that out for myself.’ She finished the last of her wine and poured another.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I have no desire to rake over all this again but for the sake of closure, you need to understand that if you had to fuck another woman, you could not have chosen anyone worse. Your disloyalty to me was beyond forgiveness.’

  She had told him what he already knew, and of course she was right. But she was also right about closure. He had needed to hear her say it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, knowing how lame and inadequate it sounded but wanting to tell her anyway.

  Olivia stared into her wine glass. ‘What will you do?’ she asked.

  ‘My mother has decided to sell the Rectory and buy that cottage for sale up by the church. She can’t bear the thought of me going bankrupt, so she’s paying off my debts and giving me a loan to start another business. Something small, less ambitious than Downings. I’m going to talk to Johnny about it, see if he’d be interested in coming in with me.’

  ‘He doesn’t have any money.’

  ‘I know, but he has other things: technical skills, experience. And he’s a good friend. I can trust him. It’s just a thought . . .’

  They sat in silence for a while, taking in the room, the furniture, the confusing mix of familiar and unfamiliar things: a metaphor for their new reality.

  Geoffrey had one last question. He hoped that he already knew the answer, but needed Olivia to confirm it. ‘Before all of this’ – he waved his hand around to encompass her move to the cottage and everything that had precipitated it – ‘we had a good marriage, didn’t we?’

  The way she looked at him made Geoffrey think of the girl with the swishy ponytail who couldn’t reach the pigeonholes. She leaned across and touched his hand.

  ‘We had Edward.’

  Enjoyed An Unsuitable Marriage?

  Read on for an extract from Colette Dartford’s debut novel, Learning to Speak American.

  Available in paperback and eBook now.

  One

  Lola remembered how only Darcy had enjoyed that foray into the Mendips, bounding along rutted paths, scampering through swampy fields, rolling joyously in cowpats. She should have told him off – bad boy Darcy, bad dog – but she was grateful to have him there, a welcome buffer between her and Duncan.

  It had been almost a year since Clarissa’s accident and Darcy would still lie outside her bedroom door and whimper, unable to understand why she wasn’t there. Lola didn’t understand either.

  As Duncan had consulted an Ordnance Survey map, Lola felt it best not to mention that she and Clarissa used to hack over the myriad of bridleways that criss-crossed the Mendip hills, rendering the map somewhat redundant. If she had mentioned it, Duncan would have got that dark, brooding look she had become all too familiar with, followed by a punitive silence – the price she paid for saying their daughter’s name out loud. But as they picked their way along the muddy tracks, memories of those precious times had flooded back; one so vivid Lola couldn’t hold it inside.

  ‘Polo spooked along here,’ she blurted, pointing to a bend in the bridleway. ‘A pair of terriers appeared out of nowhere, barking and getting under his hooves, then he took off.’ Grief stabbed at her chest. So painful to talk about her little girl, but more painful not to. She swallowed hard. ‘Clarissa didn’t have time to gather up her reins, but she managed to grab a handful of mane and cling on until I could get past and pull him up.’

  Lola relived the scene in her head, eyes closed, face tilted to the milky sky. Clarissa had let out a shrill cry when Polo bolted. Lola listened hard, trying to hear something, anything that might pull her further back into that moment, but the only sound was the wild October wind cavorting among the trees.

  When she opened her eyes Duncan was gone. She called his name but he didn’t answer. Darcy headed along the track at a jog and Lola followed. She spotted Duncan ahead, his back to her. He ignored her when she reached him.

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said. ‘It just reminded me . . .’ Her voice trailed off when he quickened his pace. Darcy dropped a stick at his feet, tail wagging, but Duncan ignored him too. Lola resigned herself to the inevitable silence, but Duncan stopped abruptly and turned.

  ‘I don’t need to be reminded we had a daughter,’ he said. ‘Nor do I need to be reminded why we lost her – ’

  Was that what he had taken from her recollection? That she had saved Clarissa from danger and he hadn’t? He turned his back to her again. She wanted to touch him but he looked rigid, unyielding. A string of riders appeared, galloping towards them. Duncan and Lola retreated to the edge of the path and when the riders had thundered past Duncan muttered something about rain and that they should probably head home.

  *

  How bizarre that memory should intrude here, now, in a smart San Francisco hotel room, a world away from the windswept Mendips. But how much had really changed? Any mention of Clarissa was still taboo and Duncan’s strategy was still to distract her, keep her busy, not give her time to think. Moping, he called it. She called it missing Clarissa.

  Duncan didn’t say why he chose San Francisco for their anniversary and Lola didn’t ask. She feigned delight, all the time thinking how exhausting it would be to have a whole two weeks of his undivided attention. At home they had mastered the art of avoidance – Duncan ensconced in his study, Lola busy with the horses – but such enforced proximity would quickly deplete their arsenal of small talk.

  The hotel room was a shrine to French antiques. While Duncan dealt with the luggage, Lola wandered over to the tall arched windows. A glassy cyan ocean glistened beneath a blood-orange sun. Swirls of pink and peach washed through the dusk sky. Parallel to the water a long, wide street pulsed with traffic and pedestrians. Lola stared unblinking, mesmerised by the unfamiliar scene. She was used to sky that teetered between various shades of grey and narrow muddy lanes that convoluted through the English countryside, as if to go anywhere directly was to miss the point of the journey. The contrast surprised her, sparked a flicker of interest she hadn’t expected.

  ‘Do you like it?’ asked Duncan.

  ‘I do,’ said Lola, and not just because that was what he wanted to hear.

  Nothing shone a spotlight on unhappiness like the pressure of a happy occasion, but she knew how much trouble he had gone to and that it wasn’t just about their anniversary. He was trying to make recompense for Clarissa, as if such a thing were possible. Lola didn’t believe it was possible to get over the loss of a child, but Duncan was determined they should move on with their lives, put it all behind them. He never said as much – that would have meant talking about Clarissa – but he offered all sorts of diversions, his way of saying, see, life goes on, without actually having to say it. He planned weekend trips that Lola would cancel, or offered a litany of hobbies in which she had no interest: tennis, bridge, a little golf perhaps.

  ‘I’ve planned a pretty full itinerary,’ he said, unpacking his suitcase.

  ‘Of course you have,’ said Lola quietly.

  He disappeared into the bathroom saying something about an exhibition that Lola didn’t quite catch. She looked at her own suitcase but couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to unpack. Instead, she went back to the window and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. They had been married twenty years. Clarissa had been dead for two. Lola wondered quite what they had to celebrate.

  *

  Duncan was brisk and full of purpose the following morning, already showered and dressed before Lola had finished her first cup of tea. His shirt – cornflower blue with a faint white stripe – had sharp creases, as though just removed from its pa
ckaging. Only the very top button was undone.

  ‘New shirt?’ asked Lola.

  He adjusted the starched collar and nodded. She noticed he was wearing cufflinks: square, gold and shiny. Distinguished – it described him perfectly. No hint of the paunch that afflicted most men in middle age, or the ‘scourge of alopecia’, as he called it. Duncan was mystified by the fashion among young men to shave their head, as if baldness was something to aspire to. His own hair was thick and dark but for liberal glints of gunmetal grey. Lola saw the way women looked at him and remembered that she used to look at him that way too.

  ‘Come on,’ he cajoled. ‘Why don’t you get up?’

  ‘I didn’t sleep very well,’ she said. ‘Jetlag, I suppose.’

  He sat on the end of the bed and offered an indulgent smile.

  ‘It’s a beautiful day,’ he said. ‘A walk will do you good. You’ll feel much better when you’re up and about and doing something.’

  Lola wasn’t convinced, but she stifled a yawn and asked what he had in mind.

  ‘There’s an exhibition at MOMA I thought you might enjoy,’ he said, on the move again. He fetched a colourful flyer from the desk and handed it to her. ‘Matisse as Sculptor’.

  His pleased-with-himself smile reminded her how hard he was trying and the least she could do was play along.

  ‘Sounds great,’ she said, draining her cup and pouring another tea.

  *

  The sun was warm and a cool breeze fluttered off the ocean. Lola looked at the ferries, the trams, the giant double-decker bridge, and thought how foreign it all seemed. The vibrancy of the city, its barefaced vitality, flooded her fragile senses, reminding her how insular her life had become. She tried to compare it to London, but San Francisco felt different – younger and more rebellious. And besides, Lola couldn’t remember the last time she had visited London – nowadays she rarely ventured beyond the Somerset village they had moved to six months after they were married, let alone made the hundred-mile journey to the capital. Duncan encouraged her to meet him there, tempting her with museums, galleries, the theatre – all the things she once loved. Maybe next week, she would say.

  Yet he’d got her to San Francisco, and it did seem to seep through the veil of sadness that shrouded her from the world. It unsettled her, though, this reminder that there was so much in life that she used to take pleasure in.

  *

  Their timing could not have been worse. They arrived at the museum just as a party of schoolgirls filed in, and suddenly all Lola could see was her daughter. Their blazers were like the one Clarissa used to wear, navy blue with a white crest on the right breast pocket. A couple of the girls had the same long glossy hair. Lola willed them to turn around so she could see their faces. Even now, part of her couldn’t quite believe she would never see her child again. The girls’ excited chatter echoed in the huge marble hall, and Lola watched how they moved, laughed, spoke, longing to see some mannerism or gesture that reminded her of Clarissa – something physical to flesh out her memories, give them shape and form, right there in front of her eyes. One of the glossy-haired girls turned and looked straight at her. She was nothing like Clarissa.

  ‘Darling?’ said Duncan.

  He was holding two exhibition guides that she hadn’t noticed him buy.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where would you like to start? I thought we might go straight to the Matisse?’

  Lola couldn’t have cared less. She longed to say, look at what we’ve lost, but she saw the set of his mouth, the tightness in his jaw, and realised Duncan was thinking about Clarissa too. Lola took one of the guides.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s start with the Matisse.’

  She let Duncan take the lead, even though art was her field, not his. He asked what she thought, what she knew about Matisse, why he took up sculpting so late in his career, but her monosyllabic responses must have worn him down because he said that if she wasn’t interested they could leave. She wanted to say yes, but that would have spoiled the whole day, and what then? They’d go back to the hotel, be polite to each other while avoiding eye contact and any mention of the one subject Lola wanted to talk about. No. She racked her brains to remember what she knew about Matisse, what fragments of knowledge she could piece together to reward Duncan for having thought of the exhibition in the first place.

  ‘He sculpted throughout his career,’ she said, ‘but his sculptures were overshadowed by his paintings. It’s his painting people recognise.’

  Duncan looked at her, his head tilted slightly to one side. ‘Really? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yes. He often sculpted and painted the same figures, like this one,’ she said, pointing to Large Seated Nude.

  ‘Is it me,’ asked Duncan, studying the sculpture, ‘or is it ugly?’

  ‘He liked to challenge idealised notions of gender, represent women as thin and muscular at the same time, blend elements of masculine and feminine.’

  Duncan nodded. ‘Impressive,’ he said.

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘Not particularly. I meant you – your knowledge of Matisse.’

  Lola smiled, said she’d forgotten most of it.

  ‘Maybe you should take a course, brush up on your art history.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Lola, although she knew she wouldn’t.

  *

  It was later, back at the hotel, when Duncan phoned room service and ordered a bottle of champagne, that Lola was on her guard. What better opportunity to resurrect their dormant sex-life than in a five-star hotel on their wedding anniversary? It wasn’t that she didn’t want him, more that they had lost the rhythm of being a couple – intimacy nurtured through small, everyday gestures of love and affection. Their intimacy had been so violently disrupted that it had never recovered. Lola no longer undressed in front of him. They didn’t talk about that either.

  ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ she said, shutting the bathroom door behind her.

  When Duncan knocked ten minutes later, she quickly arranged the foamy bubbles so that only her head and shoulders were visible.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  He came in holding two flutes of champagne, perched on the side of the bath tub and handed her one of the flutes. She rarely drank champagne any more, but instantly recalled the sweet sherbet taste, the way the bubbles danced on her tongue.

  ‘It’s Schramsberg,’ said Duncan, holding up his glass.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The champagne – it’s Schramsberg, produced in the Napa Valley. Official wine of the White House. We could do a tour of the caves if you like.’

  ‘Could we?’

  There it was again – that pleased-with-himself look. ‘I didn’t think you’d want to spend too long in the city so I found a hotel right in the heart of wine country.’

  ‘Clever you,’ said Lola, although she now realised she was coming to enjoy the novelty of the city.

  He grazed her shoulder with his hand and offered to wash her back.

  ‘Already done,’ she said too brightly.

  She willed him to leave but he sat there in his thick white robe, sweat beading on his face and neck. It was easier at home – so many rooms that avoiding each other hardly seemed like avoiding each other at all. Here there was nowhere to hide.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ said Lola when the silence became unbearable. ‘Why don’t you see what’s on TV?’

  He never watched television, but got the message and left. She closed her eyes and slid under the water.

  *

  Duncan hired a sleek red convertible for the drive to the Napa Valley and insisted on having the roof down, even in the chilly morning air. Lola tilted her face to the sun and breathed deeply, detecting a faint tang of salt. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, watching her, monitoring her mood. It felt strange to be sitting next to him in an open-top car – not like them at all. Over breakfast he had mentioned something about pushing her out of her comfort zone, an expression Lo
la thought was very un-Duncan-like, one she’d expect him to dismiss as psychobabble.

  ‘You worry about me too much,’ she said.

  He kept his eyes on the road.

  ‘It’s a while since you’ve been more than ten miles outside of Piliton,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to feel’ – he seemed to struggle for the right word – ‘overwhelmed.’

  Lola was surprised. Had Duncan just alluded to the fragility he carefully tiptoed around without ever mentioning by name?

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘Actually, I’ve rather enjoyed the strangeness of it – the fact that it’s so different to home.’

  The tightness in his jaw relaxed.

  ‘I’m doing my best,’ she said.

  He patted her leg.

  ‘I know you are.’

  Duncan’s uncanny ability to find his way around foreign cities had always impressed Lola. It reminded her of a time before Clarissa was born, when she sometimes accompanied him on business trips. He travelled to alien, exotic places and she was flattered he wanted her with him. She assumed men used these occasions for extra-marital sex, a sort of adultery amnesty, so far from home that it didn’t count. During the day she’d busy herself sightseeing and at night Duncan would ravish her, aroused by some hotel-room fantasy she willingly fulfilled.

  ‘Look,’ Duncan said, jolting her back to the present. ‘The Golden Gate Bridge.’

  Lola pushed her sunglasses onto her head, wanting to see the bridge in all its glory, illuminated by the dazzling yellow sun. The way it spanned the ocean, disappearing into what remained of the Pacific fog, endowed it with an almost mystical quality. Its colour seemed to change from one moment to the next – reddish orange, then brown, then more of a brick red. The sailing boats bobbing below looked like toys. Everything sparkled: the bridge, the white sails, the infinite expanse of water. She was gripped with the same feeling she’d had when she looked out of the tall arched window – that momentary sense of awe.

  When Duncan had announced they were going to California, Lola thought of vast arid landscapes and endless sandy beaches, yet just forty minutes out of San Francisco, they were in lush, verdant wine country. She liked how the breeze whipped through her hair, the way the air smelled sweet and clean. Duncan fiddled with the radio and found a station called Vine. He sang along to the Eagles like he didn’t have a care in the world. Lola sat back and tried to imagine what that would be like.