The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

by Elizabeth Buchan

  It was a quarter to two when I got out of bed and opened the doors to Nathan’s wardrobe. Already light dust coated the contents. There were his ties, blue, red and green. A scarf was jammed on to the shelf and I picked it up. It was an expensive one, and I caught the faintest echo of his aftershave. The sensation of a sharp instrument striking through my breast made me gasp. I sank down on the bed, holding it between fingers from which the feeling had drained.

  Nathan was dead.

  After a while, I put it aside, took out his favourite grey suit and laid it on the bed. Into the jacket I tucked his favourite blue office shirt. Round the collar went the tie, red silk. A pair of silk socks and polished shoes completed the ensemble.

  There. This was the shell of Nathan. I could pretend he was there, leaning against the pillows, hands folded behind his head. Minty, will you please pay attention… Pillow punched. Shoes eased off and discarded. Minty, what do you think?

  The bag for the hospice charity shop was on the floor. If I removed the tie from the shell and placed it in the bag, part of Nathan had gone. If I took out the shirt, as I now did, and folded it carefully, another bit of him had vanished. The shoes… the shoes? If I dropped them into the bag, it would be impossible for Nathan ever again to walk into number seven and run up the stairs – where are my boys?

  And with the suit went the businessman who formulated strategies and said, Our competitors are really strong. Let’s give them a hard time.

  ‘When I married Nathan,’ Rose had confided to me, at one of our lunches in the early days, ‘I was brokenhearted from a love affair that had gone wrong. But Nathan was so anxious to make me happy, how could I resist? He was a rock, and Hal was unreliable sand. What more could I ask?’

  I was not so convinced by Rose’s capacity to sort out the rocks from the sand. This was a woman who, she also confided to me, used to slip into St Benedicta’s church en route for home and light a candle under the Madonna. If that was not building a house on sand, I didn’t know what was.

  ‘Hal could never be what I wanted,’ Rose had added. ‘We both knew it. But Nathan was.’

  Downstairs, one of the twins cried out. I swept the suit into the bag and went to find out which one.

  Felix had had a bad dream. ‘Mummy, there was a big, big cat with big claws and he was trying to claw me…’

  I drew his hot little body close and whispered, ‘It’s all right, Felix. Mummy’s here. I’ve chased the bad cat away. Look, it’s gone.’

  It was not all right. Yet as I soothed my son with this lie I took a curious pleasure and pride in its construction. Until the boys were big and bold enough to know better, it was my business to shield them from the worst.

  22

  When I turned out the pocket of my black linen trousers, I discovered the sprig of the plant I’d picked at Claire Manor. It was brittle and withered, with only faint traces of the blue that had attracted me. Intrigued, I looked it up in one of Nathan’s books. It was called nepeta, and its old nickname was ‘Kattesminte’. It was so powerfully attractive to cats that infant seedlings had to be protected against them.

  The phone rang as I was reading about catmint.

  If you set it, the cats will get it

  If you sow it, the cats won’t know it.

  ‘I know I’m not talking to you,’ said Paige.

  ‘OΚ,’ I said. ‘I’m not asking you how the baby is.’

  ‘He’s a bit of a screamer.’ Her voice wavered. ‘I’ve never been so exhausted.’ For Paige to admit anything of the sort was serious. ‘Three children, and I have to make them into human beings without turning myself into a monster.’ Her voice veered up the scale. ‘It’s so tough that I sometimes wonder.’

  It was almost unheard-of for Paige to have doubts. ‘Paige, have you been in touch with Martin?

  ‘Tell you what, ask me about Lara’s arabesques instead.’

  ‘Paige. Have you been in touch with Martin?’

  ‘Minty. Don’t interfere. OK?’

  I raised my eyes to the ceiling. ‘How are Lara’s arabesques?’

  ‘Funnily enough, very good. She has an excellent line, but she’s let down a bit by her feet. Pats of butter, unfortunately. But we’ll get to work on them.’

  I felt sorry for the ramshackle, terrorized Lara. From now on, her feet would not be her own. At the other end of the phone Paige sighed heavily, a sound pregnant with despair and uncertainty, and I weighed in. ‘You’ve got to think again about Martin.’

  ‘I think about him, Minty, all the time, and I’m very fond of him. Very. But I haven’t time to be married. Not with three children. Not if I’m to do things properly’

  ‘Paige, have you eaten today?’

  ‘Eaten? Not much. I’m far too busy. And before you ask, no, I’m not sleeping well. I know you think I’ve gone mad with post-natal depression and maybe I have, but at the best of times, Martin’s a reluctant father. He doesn’t enjoy it. He hates the house being full of children. Now, who’s the one with a psychosis?’

  ‘All the same he needs to be there.’

  There was an ominous silence. ‘Minty, I’m not sure about lectures from you.’

  ‘Where is he living?’

  At his mother’s. She’s put him in the attic bedroom for the time being.’

  *

  I rang Martin and arranged to meet him the following afternoon at the bank. ‘Minty, is this urgent? I have a big convention in Geneva and I’m travelling for the next couple of weeks. But if you really need to see me I can fit you in at two thirty.’

  To his credit, Martin was on time, which didn’t give me much opportunity to study the building’s stunning glass atrium. He stepped out of a lift, kissed my cheek and steered me down the corridor. ‘This had better be good.’

  ‘You asked me to keep an eye on Paige.’

  ‘Ah, my wife.’ For all the lightness of tone, Martin was on the alert. He led me into the canteen, which was more like a banqueting hall, did the equivalent of clicking his fingers and, lo and behold, we were presented with freshly made espresso, hot milk and a cantucci biscuit each. Living with his mother was doing him no harm physically for, unlike his wife, he was immaculate, slim, and healthy-complexioned.

  I could never resist cantucci I dipped mine into the espresso and bit into it with the special pleasure reserved for the forbidden. ‘Martin, you must go home.’

  He frowned. ‘She threw me out. Remember?’

  ‘She’s just had a baby. We’ve agreed you’re half mad when you’ve had a baby. You stay half mad, I reckon, until they’re adults. Paige is half mad anyway’ Martin snorted. ‘She won’t listen to me because I’m a sinner. Or, at least, she won’t take my advice.’ I stared longingly at Martin’s cantucci and, obediently, he handed it over.

  ‘The children, Martin. They’ll be suffering from all this. They may not show it but they will.’ I included my own in the generalization, which made the declaration even more impassioned. And if Felix and Lucas hurt, I hurt. ‘Do you really hate them?’

  ‘Is that what Paige says?’ Martin frowned. ‘I knew before they arrived it would be tricky, but even I was surprised by how impossible it became. I warned Paige that she was obsessed. But…’ He gave me a steady look – the I-am-a-rock one in which Nathan had specialized. ‘… I would never have left of my own accord.’

  I countered, ‘Paige has had a baby. She’s weak, her hormones are all over the place, and she’s not thinking straight.’

  To my acute distress, Martin’s eyes filled. ‘Ignore me,’ he muttered. ‘But could you stop right there?’

  I made a rapid reconnaissance of the room. No one had noticed Martin’s tears – had a beady-eyed rival taken it on board, it would have done him no good. A group of bankers in pinstriped suits plodded in. They were all as plump as pullets and spoke to each other in low, earnest tones. I jabbed a finger in their direction. ‘Doesn’t look that much fun working here.’

  ‘It isn’t.’ He shaded his eyes with a hand
. ‘Nothing’s much fun, these days.’

  ‘You could put things right.’

  Martin pulled himself together. ‘As a matter of interest, Minty, why are you taking this view?’ He meant, why should you, the wrecker, argue so strongly for the opposite?

  I might have taken offence but I’d grown used to my label. ‘I have two small boys,’ I said.

  He directed a countenance so full of woe at me that I was forced to look down at my coffee cup. ‘Just walk back in, Martin. Tell Paige she’s wrong and that you won’t have a broken family. Tell her it’s for the children’s sake.’

  ‘I didn’t agree to be hauled out of an important briefing meeting so that you could tell me what’s blindingly obvious.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  To my surprise he reached over and took my hands. ‘It was well done, Minty.’

  I let them rest in his. I knew perfectly well that whatever I said or advised would have little influence on him, but I had said and would continue to say it. ‘On second thoughts, Martin, tell Paige it’s for her sake too. Do it.’

  I left him by the state-of-the-art elevators, which would whisk him back up to the nineteenth floor, and headed out of the door.

  A postcard arrived in the post. ‘Dear Minty. I enjoyed seeing the boys and I wondered…’ there was a space between ‘wondered’ and ‘if I could see them again? I would love to take them to the zoo or to the cinema perhaps. Rose.’

  The card did not exude confidence. The writing was hesitant and the wording suggested that Rose had written it against her better judgement. But in her sending and my receiving, an element shifted in the balance between us.

  A week elapsed before I responded.

  At Paradox, I chipped away at the final details for Pointe of Departure and toyed with the notion of developing a history of choreography but discarded it. Deb announced that she was off to work for Papillon and when I told her how sorry I was, she replied, ‘Oh, I don’t have time to hang around any more,’ in a nonchalant manner that imperfectly hid her unhappiness. The mention of time got me thinking about the abandoned middle-age project, and I retrieved it from my ‘reject’ file.

  I threw myself at administration. I wrote letters to the bank. I had several long conversations with Theo. I researched addiction counsellors. I paid bills. I rearranged the furniture in the sitting room and my bedroom, so that the house took on a different aspect. Nathan’s study had been transformed into a cosy, feminine space. My papers were on the noticeboard: school rotas, work schedules… those lists.

  My clothes occupied the total space available in the wardrobes and drawers and on the pegs. My bottles occupied the shelf in the bathroom. Upstairs in the attic a cardboard box contained Nathan’s razor, a shaving brush made from badger hair, a hairbrush and a new comb still in its plastic wrapping. There they would wait until I gave them to Felix and Lucas.

  I lay awake and counted the ghosts. I had been wrong. There is some kind of justice, for no one ever escapes anyone else. Nathan had never got away from Rose. Rose had never got away from Hal. Rose and I had never got away from each other.

  After Rose had been sacked as books editor and I had taken over, I plotted how I would spice up the pages and transform them. My books pages would fizz with new ideas. Yet when Timon sacked me, he damned my efforts: ‘Your pages were nothing new,’ he wrote.

  Rose told me that she had suffered torment and anguish over Hal, her first lover. But also moments of such sweetness and ecstasy that she carried them with her for always. I do not possess memories such as those. But Rose’s were like fragrant sachets tucked into a drawer. I envied her.

  My reply to Rose took me a long time to write, and the words were bottlenecked at the end of my pen. ‘Would you like to come to sports day at the boys’ school?’

  It was agreed. Rose would come early to watch the opening events with Eve, and I would join them for those in which Felix and Lucas were competing – the sack race, egg-and-spoon, sprint, high jump. There was a dire form of advanced torture called the Parents’ Race, which, Lucas informed me, I was expected to win.

  Sports day minus twelve hours, Felix and Lucas dragged me into the garden after their supper. They wanted to practise running and the three-legged race. I protested that they would get indigestion but Felix pulled at my arm and said, ‘Please.’

  I found myself standing patiently – an adverb that had many nuances – with my watch in my hand as the boys pelted up and down the lawn until Lucas turned pale and said he felt sick.

  Sports day minus five hours. The starlings were roosting outside the bedroom door again. It was five to six in the morning. Lucas snuck into the room, climbed on to the bed and nuzzled me. ‘Mummy, you must come.’

  ‘Why?’ I squinted at him. He was in his dressing-gown.

  ‘Come and see,’ he persisted.

  Somehow I got out of bed and stumbled into the boys’ room. There, neatly laid out on his bed, was Felix’s sports kit. T-shirt, navy blue shorts, white plimsolls and white socks. ‘Have I got it right, Mummy?’ he asked.

  ‘Look at me,’ Lucas said, and tore off his dressing-gown. He was wearing his – but the T-shirt was back to front. He mimed a couple of air punches and dropped to one knee. ‘Ready, steady – go.’

  ‘Come here, Lukey. You’ve got your T-shirt on wrong.’

  Felix scrabbled under the bed and, with an air of triumph, produced my trainers, which he must have taken from my wardrobe, and laid them at my feet. ‘That’s for your race, Mummy’

  ‘Right.’ I wrestled with Lucas and the T-shirt.

  Felix was cataloguing his kit. ‘There are my shorts. These are my shoes…’

  ‘Very good, boys,’ I said. ‘Brilliant. Couldn’t be better.’ I sat down on Lucas’s bed. ‘Do you know how early it is?’

  Felix had finished his inventory and was hopping about with his pyjama bottoms round his ankles. ‘You will come, Mummy, won’t you?’

  I rubbed my eyes. ‘Of course,’ I said.

  At Paradox, I worked solidly through the morning and got ready to leave on time, armed with the file entitled Statistical Analysis of Depression in Females, 40-65. Then Syriol called, ‘Visitor for you, Minty.’

  A wan, appreciably thinner Poppy sat on one of the seats leafing through Television Weekly. At my approach, she threw aside the magazine and leapt to her feet. ‘Hi. I’m sorry to do this to you, but have you any news from Theo?’

  ‘No. It’s taking a heck of time, but there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘Oh, God, Minty.’ She had tied her hair back savagely. It didn’t suit her.

  ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘I keep thinking Dad would have so hated me for this. He was always so careful and taught me to be careful, and it’s haunting me. I can’t get this picture out of my head that he’s thinking I’ve let him down.’ She wrapped her skirt round her fingers, bandage-style. ‘I hate to think he’d be disappointed in me.’

  ‘You’ve got to talk to Richard, Poppy’

  She shook her head. ‘I have to deal with it myself. It was a mistake, and just because I’m married to Richard it doesn’t mean he has to know everything about me.’ She fingered her handbag strap. ‘My poker debt is a private matter.’

  ‘What about your mother? She’d understand.’

  ‘You don’t know Mum,’ Poppy said miserably. ‘She’s not forgiving on some things. What I need is the money Dad left me. Then I can pay off my debt and I won’t bother you again.’

  ‘Theo’s still wrestling with the Inland Revenue. There were a couple of problems that no one could iron out to do with the money your father inherited from your grandmother.’ I was curious. ‘Why did you do it, Poppy?’

  She shrugged. ‘It was exciting. I thought I could beat the system. All the usual excuses.’ She observed a point on the wall. ‘So boring and predictable.’

  She was so agitated that I got up, went to the water-cooler and ran a mugful. I pressed it into her hands. ‘You know, it
’s all perfectly manageable.’

  Barry walked down the corridor and raised an eyebrow. I made a nondescript gesture, and he disappeared. I glanced at my watch. Time was leapfrogging and Lucas was due to run in the egg-and-spoon.

  Poppy noticed the gesture. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Minty. I know you’re busy’ The concession was so unexpected that I sat down beside her with a thump. ‘I don’t understand, Minty, why I was caught. Then I think I wanted to be caught by it… Oh, what the hell? What the hell?’

  There was not much slack in my finances, but sufficient to take a temporary knock. I reached into my handbag for my cheque book. ‘Look, why don’t I lend you some for the moment? It’ll stave off the problem, and then you and I will go to see Theo. He’s bound to confidentiality.’

  Poppy raised her head. ‘Would you do that?’

  Her astonishment was almost offensive but, funnily enough, I understood. ‘Yes.’

  ‘OΚ. Thanks.’ Tears streamed down Poppy’s cheeks. ‘I’m a mess… Minty. That’s what I am. And what do I do about it?’

  Egg-and-spoon race. Next up the sack race. Felix was in that one. I hauled my notebook out of my bag. ‘Actually, Poppy, I’ve done some research on counselling.’

  ‘Counselling!’ She was dismissive.

  I stared at her. Are you serious or not?’

  Poppy didn’t answer. I grabbed her wrist, hauled her out of Paradox, hailed the first taxi and told him to drive to an address in South Kensington. ‘I’m taking you to a counsellor who’s highly recommended. When we get there, Poppy, you’re going to make an appointment and I’m going to watch you do it.’

  By the time I arrived at the common, the races had been run, the rosettes pinned on to chests and the picnics were in full swing.

  There was the usual mêlée of parents, mostly mothers, with one or two progressive, unemployed or browbeaten fathers. An area of the common had been roped off. It contained a table on which flapped a white cloth held down by several silver cups. Their status came under the heading ‘reprieved’: the cups were the relic of an earlier era and there had been much solemn debate among the staff as to whether competitive races should be allowed.