‘I’d forgotten.’ Barry jack-knifed to his feet. ‘Deb, I’ll hear what you have to say this afternoon.’
And that was that.
Deb swept up the plastic cups, dumped them in the bin and rubbed a tissue over the table top. ‘No green lights today. We’d better have a chat, Minty. Tomorrow.’ She checked herself. ‘Oh, but you’re not here tomorrow, are you? You won’t be in till next week.’ Her expression was quite nasty and she had scrubbed so hard that the table was dotted with balls of wet tissue.
*
‘So…’ Gisela arched her eyebrows ‘… Rose and Nathan are in touch.’ She was giving me lunch at the Café Noir as a thank-you for dinner. We had talked long and hard, which had given birth to confidences I had not intended: I had found myself explaining to Gisela how I had discovered that Rose and Nathan were in contact. Gisela’s eyes sparkled. ‘Did you read the diary?’
I owed Nathan some loyalty. ‘No.’
Gisela did not believe me. ‘Have you talked to him about Rose?’
It had been a relief to confide in her. ‘No, but I will.’ I reached for my water, so stuffed with ice that I had difficulty drinking it. ‘It’s complicated. Nathan and I haven’t got to the stage where we’re each other’s best friend. Perhaps that’s where Rose fits in.’
‘Perhaps not.’ Gisela had sounded a warning note. ‘Perhaps not, Minty.’
The ice clinked against my teeth and sent an unpleasant frisson through the enamel. ‘Technically, can you commit adultery with an ex-spouse?’
‘You think it’s like that?’
‘No,’ I said quickly. I changed the subject: ‘I’m thinking of going back to work full-time.’ I recollected Deb’s nasty look. ‘There are tensions when you work part-time, and I never feel I’m giving it my full attention.’
‘I admire you for working in an office. I could never do it – have never done it.’
‘You entertain, run the houses. Not hard work? I think it is.’
Gisela spread out her hand, nails sculpted and polished, skin creamed. ‘Remember, I have time to concentrate on one thing. I don’t have children or a job, so I can give my all to the husband of the day. Nice. And simple.’ She closed her eyes briefly. ‘But tiring, from time to time.’
Her mobile shrilled. Gisela gestured towards it apologetically. ‘Do you mind? It’ll be Roger. He likes to check up on arrangements at about this time.’ No one could accuse Gisela of shirking her duties as she ran through Roger’s schedule. ‘Meeting at two thirty tomorrow. Three thirty-five, you’re seeing Mr Evans in Harley Street. Remember Annabel’s birthday… And, Roger, the guests are arriving at seven o’clock sharp.’ There was more in this vein, so much so that I had finished my apricot and arugula salad by the end of the call. ‘Minty, I’m sorry. Such bad manners, but if I’m not on tap for Roger he gets into a state.’ She did not, I noticed, turn off the phone.
I twirled my water glass. ‘Can I ask you something? How did you cope with Richmond’s first wife?’
‘Ah.’ Gisela tapped my hand. ‘I didn’t think about her. That was the trick. There’s no safety in thinking. If one harps on about all the questionable things that one does, and I acknowledge that I do them, then one’s at a disadvantage. Her name was Myra and she rescued Richmond when he was down on his luck, and they built up the business together. But she made a mistake. She forgot to treat him as a husband. So…’ Gisela looked thoughtful ‘… it was simple for me.’ After a moment, she added, ‘Richmond wanted me, elderly as he was. So you see – ‘
The phone rang again. Gisela answered it. ‘Roger,’ she sounded sharp, ‘I am having lunch.’ To my astonishment, colour flamed into her cheeks. ‘Marcus? Where are you? No. Not tonight. I’m entertaining.’ She swivelled away from me. ‘I’m having lunch with a friend. No. Yes. Soon.’
Now she did switch off the phone. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ The colour still danced in her cheeks and she made a show of dabbing her mouth with her napkin, then an eye. ‘Mascara,’ she declared, and consulted her handbag mirror.
‘Is everything all right?’ I watched her smooth a tiny line at the corner of her eye. ‘Is Marcus one of the hostile family?’
‘Marcus…’ Gisela dropped the mirror back into her bag. She fixed her eyes on me, evidently making some kind of calculation. ‘I’ve known Marcus all my life. He sort of… fits in between my marriages. Some people do, you know. You can’t get rid of them.’
‘Between marriages? Are you…?’
She played with the diamond on her left hand. ‘No. But there’s work and there’s play. Tonight at the dinner Roger and I will give, there’s a good chance that I’ll be a little bored by the person sitting next to me. But I will not suggest it by so much as a flicker, and I will make that person feel good about themselves, and it will benefit Roger.’ The coffee had arrived and she glanced down at it. ‘I never confuse work and play.’
Gisela had been exceptionally indiscreet and I was curious to know why. Across the table, I observed the expertly tinted lids mask the knowing eyes and the equation was solved. It was simple, even for one whose mathematical skill was limited. Gisela knew perfectly well that her secret was safe with me because her husband was my husband’s boss.
By mutual consent we moved on to safer subjects – the Gard house in France, Roger’s clutch of directorships and the rumour that Vistemax was being eyed by a German conglomerate. The Chelsea house was in the process of redecoration, and Gisela was fretting over the colour schemes. ‘Did I tell you that Maddy Kington, who’s advising me, has run off with the builder on the last house she worked on? She’s now living in a bungalow in Reading. A case of l’amour du cottage. What do you think the cottage is like?’
I returned to the office knowing that, under Gisela’s Chloé suit and the matching Bulgari jewellery, the woman had worked out to the last flutter of those mascaraed eyelashes what was necessary for her survival.
I let myself in at the front door of number seven and braced myself.
Sure enough, Lucas appeared at the top of the stairs, half in and half out of his trousers. I put down my bag, and went up as he launched himself at me. I picked him up and carried him into the bedroom where Eve was battling for supremacy with Felix. Lucas nuzzled my neck, damp little lips nibbling. Then he wriggled down and dived towards Eve, who seized the moment to haul off his trousers.
A fully dressed Felix was standing by the window that overlooked the street. He turned round. ‘Mummy, there’s a poor cat out there. I think he wants a home.’
I went over to inspect the scene. ‘That’s not a poor cat, Felix. That’s Tigger. He belongs to the Blakes, you know that.’
‘But he looks lost.’ For some time now, Felix had been begging for a kitten. ‘If he was lost and came here, Mum, he’d sit on your knee. You’d like that and he could go out of his special door.’
I stroked the thin little shoulders. ‘I don’t like cats, Felix.’
He fixed a bright blue gaze on me. ‘Daddy says we can have one.’
‘Did he? When?’
‘Last night.’
‘You were asleep when Daddy came home last night.’
Felix discovered that discretion was the better part of valour. He dropped his trousers and stepped out of them. ‘It seemed like last night.’
I sighed.
Half an hour later, they were settled on either side of me as I read their bedtime story. ‘“Once upon a time, there was a big jungle where it was very hot…”’ Felix’s thumb had sneaked into his mouth and I removed it. The illustrator had gone to town. There were scarlet and blue parrots, and pale beige monkeys in the trees. On the ground, he had drawn in a scurry of ants, an anteater with a long, businesslike snout and, tucked into the left-hand corner, the sinister coils of a boa constrictor.
Lucas pointed to a monkey. ‘His eyes are as big as yours, Mummy.’
‘“The ants were very good at keeping house,”’ I read. ‘“But along came the anteater and ate them all up.”’
The illustrator provided graphic detail and the boys shrieked. ‘“Afterwards he became very sleepy, and forgot to look round.”’
‘Ohhhh…’ said Felix. ‘The snake’s squeezing him.’
Downstairs the front door opened and shut. Nathan’s briefcase hit the hall floor with a clunk. Eve ran up to her bedroom and, presently, the sound of rock music floated down.
On the final page, there was a swoop of striped fur and a glint of bared fangs as the tiger leapt on to the snake.
‘Mummy,’ asked Felix, ‘does everybody always eat everybody else?’
‘Yes.’ Lucas bared his teeth. ‘Like this.’ He sank his teeth into his brother’s arm.
Nathan arrived in the mêlée and roared for order. I fled downstairs where I took a ready-made dish of chicken breasts and mushrooms from the fridge, shoved it into the oven and set the timer. Eve had done the laundry so I picked up the basket and took it upstairs to the landing where I had set up the ironing-board.
Unless Eve stepped in, Nathan did his own shirts and was frequently sighted on the landing. He had burnt himself once, come to find me and held out a hand on which a red strip glowed. ‘What do I do?’
I held his hand under cold water, made him a cup of tea and asked every hour or so if he was feeling better. For days afterwards, I caught him examining it, and eavesdropped on his phone conversation to Poppy: ‘It could have been very nasty.’ In due course, the scab fell away leaving a scimitar-shaped scar. ‘Poppy tells me,’ Nathan was pleased with the information, ‘that this kind of burn is listed in medical textbooks as “Housewife’s Syndrome”.’
I scrutinized my unscarred wrists. ‘What does that make you, Nathan?’
‘Experienced at ironing,’ he replied evenly.
I returned downstairs. Nathan was not in the study, so I went into the sitting room. He had drawn up a chair by the french windows and was staring out into the darkness towards the lilac tree. He was quite, quite still.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. In the kitchen, the timer shrilled. I took a step into the room. ‘Nathan?’
He sighed, stirred. ‘Yes?’ He looked at me. ‘What do you want?’
After supper Nathan rolled up his shirtsleeves and tackled the glasses that were too delicate for the dishwasher. It was late, the heating had gone off and gooseflesh colonized my arms.
Nathan worked in his usual methodical way, running fresh hot water into each glass and setting it on the draining-board. I tipped the hot water into the sink, rubbed them with a cloth and placed them on a tray.
‘Nathan, what would you say if I went back to work full-time?’
‘That again,’ said Nathan.
‘That again,’ I echoed.
Years ago Timon, my boss, had called me into his office at Vistemax. On the door, a plaque read Editor, Weekend Digest I remember in particular the emphatic curve of the ‘D’. Timon, who modelled himself on Gordon Gekko, was in a pinstriped suit and braces. ‘Look, we want you to take over from Rose.’ He had never bothered much with preliminaries.
My skirt was short, the skin of my legs was buffed and polished. My heels were high, my hair lustrous with youth. With the aid of kohl and grey eye-shadow, my eyes were darkly inviting. I had dreams of domination – not the sexual kind, but of being able to manage my life effortlessly. ‘Are you sacking Rose, Timon?’
He sent me his best Gekko look. ‘You know perfectly well that that’s what you’ve been angling for.’
The previous evening, Nathan had slipped into my bed, shuddering with emotion. He had left Rose. At that point he had had no intention of marrying me, but he craved the transcendence of the love affair. He gazed so deeply into my eyes that he was in danger of X-raying my skull, and I grew uncomfortable with the intensity. Nathan was funny, tender and much more polite than I had been used to in my lovers. ‘Do you mind?’ ‘May I?’ As we moved this way and that on my cheap, inadequate double bed, sealing his arrival, I told myself that Rose had not deserved to keep him.
Timon drew a perfect circle on his notepad. ‘Six months’ probation. Yes or no?’
‘Yes.’
I quit his office high-wired with nerves and exhilaration. Abraham Maslow had been correct when he drew up his pyramid and formulated an individual’s hierarchy of need: when food, warmth, safety and sex had been seen to, it was vital to have the respect of colleagues. And respect for oneself, of course.
Six months later, I received one of those letters: Tour probationary period has now run to its close. While we have appreciated your efforts on the Books Pages, we have decided not to appoint you. Perhaps you will consider the alternatives… etc’
This time Timon didn’t bother to call me into the office.
It took me a while to decide where to file this record of my failure. Eventually, I slotted it into ‘Family History’ in Nathan’s immaculate files, fitting it between – chronologically – the photographs of Poppy’s surprise wedding in Thailand, and the christening of Jilly and Sam’s Frieda. Nathan demanded to know why I had put it there, and I told him there was no point in not facing up to the fact that I’d been sacked. He lost his temper, cursed Vistemax and raged round the room. I watched him, my heart galloping under my pregnant bump. For Nathan, life was no longer obedient and tidy, and his family had lost its shape. I knew then that his regrets were for the loss of symmetry as much as his guilt at having cut it into bits.
Nathan placed the penultimate glass on the draining-board. Foam flecked his forearms, and his fingers were rosy. ‘Your timing, Minty. It’s late.’ Pause. ‘Why?’
Again, I recollected Deb’s nasty expression. ‘I don’t think part-time works.’
He pulled out the plug. The greasy water churned away. ‘I know it doesn’t, but the boys need you. It seems to me that you have a good balance with what you’ve got.’
‘I need to work and I think I’d do better at Paradox if I was full-time.’
He nodded, and wiped down the draining-board with a cloth. ‘You see that as your priority?’
‘I do. It’ll be OK, Nathan, I promise. It’s not so difficult. Hundreds of women do it.’ I slid my arms round his waist and made him turn to face me. ‘Surely you’re not surprised?’
‘No.’ He moved out of my reach. ‘I had an idea you might be thinking along those lines.’
Why hadn’t he said something? ‘Don’t make me sound like a monster who abandons her children. I need to do something properly. You do see?’ I thought of the ideas landing in my lap. I would nurture them, make them grow and watch them fly.
‘Don’t you put your heart and soul into your sons?’ Nathan gave me a long, slow appraisal, in which all our differences were reflected. ‘I’m tired.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
I tried to read beyond the set look on his face. What could I say to dissolve them? Somewhere – and I could put my finger on it – I had lost my hold on the essential Nathan, the one who had tumbled so willingly into my grasp.
I turned off the lights one by one, and the kitchen slid into darkness. ‘I’ve decided, Nathan.’
‘Well, then,’ he said, from the doorway, ‘you’ve decided.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I said. ‘Don’t make it sound as if I plan to murder you all.’
With that he swung back to me. ‘And you,’ his anger broke through the fatigue, ‘are never satisfied.’ He checked himself and when he spoke again it was with a low, wooing voice. ‘Minty, why can’t you just get on with what we’ve got? It’s good enough, isn’t it?’ He pulled me to him and buried his face in my hair. ‘Let’s not quarrel over this.’
Quarrelling spelt another sleepless night. It meant what the self-help manuals called ‘a session to settle the issues’. It meant the whole question of my work spiralling from a minor problem into a nuclear disaster. I kissed Nathan’s cheek. ‘Let’s not.’
4
Last night Rose was on television. Granted, it was one of the lesser-known digital channels, but still…
Nathan was at a Vistemax dinner, one of the many in the run-up to Christmas. On those occasions, he rolled home smelling of cigars and brandy, often with a chocolate mint in his pocket. ‘Mints for Minty.’ Tender, and pleased with himself, he would urge me to eat this fruit that had fallen from the tree of corporate life.
In the interim, I sat on the sofa with a tray in my lap and the opening credits of Rose Lloyd’s Wonders of the World for company. The twins were asleep and Eve had gone out.
I had known about the programme. Poppy had made a point of telling me about it when she phoned to ask us to Sunday lunch. ‘It’s so exciting. Mum put up this idea of presenting her Seven Wonders of the World, and they let her have more or less free rein.’ With my experience of television production companies I knew this was an exaggeration, but you could never accuse Poppy of forgetting whose side she was on. ‘She’s been all over. It’s amazing.’
There was a pause and I said, ‘That’s wonderful.’
Poppy weighed my sincerity, evidently found it acceptable, and rattled on: ‘Lunch, then. It’s our anniversary so we thought… It’s great being married, isn’t it?’ Having fallen into the verbal equivalent of a quicksand, she had changed the subject and inquired about Felix’s recent stomach upset. She ended the conversation by saying, ‘One o’clock. But, Minty, if you feel you want some time to yourself, which I’m sure you do, just send Dad and the twins over.’
I hadn’t intended to watch Rose’s programme. No, really. But here I was, eyeing the opening credits over a plate of grated carrot, sliced tomato and ultra low-fat salad-dressing.
How long was it since I had seen Rose? Two, three years? No matter, for in my case, seeing was irrelevant. You don’t have to see someone to know they’re there, and Rose and her shadow were sewn to me as securely as Peter Pan’s had been to him.
Unable to make up my mind if I wished her withered and bony, which would have added to my guilt, or flourishing, as she appeared now, I scrutinized every inch of her. Rose looked wonderful, like a woman in charge of her life and unencumbered, which, if irritating to anyone struggling with encumbrances, let me off the hook. If Rose could look that good, she wasn’t suffering and – perhaps – the balance had evened out a little. On the other hand, I reminded myself, this was the woman who had been discussing garden plans with her ex-husband, who happened to be married to me.
The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly Page 4