by Caro Fraser
‘I think you’re in the wrong room,’ said Rachel, amazed that she managed to keep her voice level and cold, and watched as Jennifer made an undignified scramble for the nightdress and dressing gown which she had so enthusiastically discarded half an hour before. Jennifer was saying something confused and apologetic, but Rachel did not listen. ‘Get upstairs to your room,’ she cut in. ‘Tomorrow morning you will pack and go, and I will sort out the matter of your wages with the agency. Leave your keys on the hall table.’
Jennifer, conscious of the humiliating fact that she was beginning to cry, bundled up her things and ran upstairs to her room. Rachel passed a shaky hand across her face and took several deep breaths to calm herself. She stared at the bed, at the sheets rumpled and spilt across the floor, and then turned to go back downstairs.
Leo was standing at the foot of the stairs, one hand in his dressing-gown pocket, the other holding a small cigar. He had listened to the little scene between Rachel and Jennifer and had groaned inwardly, but he could not help feeling a light underscoring of amusement as he watched Jennifer’s pretty bottom in retreat.
‘You’re not fucking Noël Coward, you know,’ said Rachel coldly. This startled Leo slightly, as Rachel was not given to swearing. He glanced at the cigar in his hand.
‘No,’ he murmured. ‘No, indeed I am not.’ He tried to put a note of apology into his voice, having already decided that the best way to handle this undignified incident was to treat it with light unconcern.
She went past him and into the kitchen, waited for him to follow her in, and then closed the door.
‘Has this been going on all the time I was away?’ she demanded.
‘No. Actually, it was more a spur of the moment idea when I came in this evening,’ replied Leo idly. He was determined that this conversation would be brief, that he would not allow it to develop into a full-scale row. Those were things which he could not abide and which he always did his scrupulous best to avoid. ‘I’m sure you’re not exactly surprised. I’d already explained to you how things were to be—’
‘Yes, but I didn’t expect it here, in this house, in our bed!’
‘I shouldn’t trouble yourself about it,’ said Leo calmly. ‘She’s of no significance, I can assure you.’
Rachel’s voice dropped from anger to a level chill. ‘She may be of no significance to you, Leo, she may just be another casual screw, but believe it or not, she is quite important to me. Don’t flatter yourself that I’m angry because I found you in bed with another woman. I no longer care whom you sleep with. The reason I’m angry is that, because of your laughable sexual incontinence, I have just lost a bloody good nanny. And it’s me, not you, who is going to have to waste precious time and energy finding another.’ She ran her fingers through her hair, and breathed deeply, glaring at him. ‘And now I’m going to bed. Let’s just hope you haven’t got some young man stashed away in the spare room.’
She left the kitchen, and Leo stood for a moment in the middle of the room, gazing at the glowing tip of his cigar. She had surprised him, certainly. He had never heard her speak in such a way to him before, and he was irritated by the fact that it was she who had had the last – and the best – word. It was not pleasant to be made to feel like a mildly degenerate fool. Still, the thing was over and done with now. Of course, there would be repercussions, but he could not trouble himself to think about those now. Leo sighed, ground the remains of his cigar with a little hiss into a puddle of water in the sink, and went upstairs.
For the rest of the weekend they avoided one another as much as possible. Rachel spent Saturday ringing round nanny agencies and compiling a list of girls to interview over the coming week, desperately hoping that she would find someone suitable quickly. She took Oliver shopping, ate with him in the evening, and left Leo holed up in his study, working. On Sunday, after a dismal morning, during which she and Leo hardly spoke, she took Oliver for a long and lonely walk in the park.
She sat on a bench, Oliver beside her in his buggy, and watched other small children wheeling around among the pigeons, listening to their shouts. She gazed at the families, at the mothers and fathers who chatted idly and smiled and followed their offspring with unconsciously proud eyes, and then thought of the hopes she had built up over the last two weeks. Well, she thought with an inward sigh, there was nothing like distance to lend enchantment. She had to face it. The bargain that she and Leo had struck was purely a licence for him to behave as badly as he wished. She could see now that nothing was likely to change for the better. Leo intended to conduct his life entirely for his own pleasure, without any regard for her or Oliver. That she was theoretically allowed to do the same was neither here nor there. That was just a sop to his conscience. He knew she would just hang around waiting, hoping. Christ, how little he must think of her, she told herself bitterly.
A flock of Canada geese suddenly rose from the boating lake in a flurry of icy water and shrill honking, and Oliver laughed and waved his hands. Rachel smiled involuntarily as she looked at him. God, he was like Leo, even at this age – the same eyes, same shape of face, even beneath the baby chubbiness. She thought of Leo as he was with Oliver, and reflected that it was only in those moments that he showed a true, sincere tenderness towards any other living being. The rest was just ego, ambition and appetite. She wondered why he didn’t just divorce her and have done with it. He didn’t want her, that was now perfectly obvious. He would make love to the nanny – at least that supplied a certain titillation – but his own wife was simply too humdrum, too easy. She felt tears rising to the surface and blinked them back, rummaging in her coat pocket for a tissue. It was pointless feeling sorry for herself. The question was – what now? She could not, she knew, bear much more from Leo. She must put some distance between them. If anyone was to leave, it should be him. She was the wronged party, after all. But the idea of asking Leo to get out of the house seemed faintly bizarre. She could imagine only too easily how calmly, how obliquely he would decline to entertain the idea. And if he refused, what would she do? Start divorce proceedings, make things acrimonious? Her mind shied away from the very thought. Her instincts were merely those of flight. As at Christmas, she simply wanted to bundle herself, Oliver and their belongings out of the house and get away. Where? There was Leo’s country house, but that was impossible. She could not take refuge from him in a place that was so very much his.
Her mind began to busy itself with thoughts of letting agencies, of flats, of the possibility of staying with friends, and then she let the thoughts die blankly away. She was too tired. Anyway, the priority was to find someone to look after Oliver until she could get a new nanny. She thought suddenly of Trudy, a woman who had been in hospital giving birth at the same time. They saw one another occasionally, and Rachel knew that Trudy had a nanny for her little girl. She would probably be happy to help out, if the nanny didn’t mind. This piece of inspiration cheered and relieved her. She would ring Trudy when she got back.
Rachel rose and pushed Oliver back through the park and up the street to the house, the house that was so large and beautiful and useless. As she approached it, gazing up at its windows, she realised that she would feel no compunction about leaving it. It was Leo’s house far more than hers, and she had never known any special happiness in it. Would Leo be surprised or sorry when she eventually found the time and energy to organise her departure? She imagined not. For a moment she stood outside the front door, staring at it, and wished, with an aching, searing hopelessness, that she could walk in and find him changed, everything changed to the way it had been when she had first known him, when she had believed utterly in his love for her. It was like the game she had played as a child to conjure up a delicious fear, when she imagined to herself, as she approached her childhood home, that she might go into the kitchen through the back door and find strangers there, and the furniture different, and no one would know who she was, gazing blankly at her. And there had been the sweet relief at finding her mother in the k
itchen as usual, and everything just the same. She thought briefly of her mother in her little house in Bath, much changed from the person of her childhood, and wondered how it was that affections, people, could be so utterly transformed by time. The house, when she let herself in, was silent, but a glow of light shone from beneath Leo’s study door. It made no difference whether he was in or out, Rachel told herself as she pulled off Oliver’s mittens and unbuttoned his coat. The gulf between them now was too wide, too deep, ever to be bridged.
Rachel passed James Rothwell in the corridor at work the next morning, and he greeted her with faint surprise. ‘Didn’t expect to see you in today. Thought you’d take a couple of days off to recover from your trip.’
‘I came back a day early, so I thought I might as well come in,’ said Rachel.
‘How was it? Paper go down all right?’
‘Oh, I think so. We made some valuable contacts, too, people who look like putting a bit of business our way.’
Mr Rothwell raised his eyebrows and gave a gratified nod. ‘Excellent. Clever girl. Pop up to my office about two and we’ll have a bit of a debriefing, eh?’
‘Fine.’ Rachel carried on down the corridor to her office. Clever girl, indeed. Patronising old git. She was conscious this morning of a new sense of determination running like a steel thread through her unhappiness. Taking charge of her life, the prospect of excising Leo and all that attendant uncertain misery, gave her a strength of purpose. The mere business of organising the details was therapeutic, leaving her little time to brood. Trudy was perfectly happy to let her nanny look after Oliver until Rachel made other arrangements, so that was one small weight off her mind. Now all she had to do, when her caseload allowed enough time, was to sort out somewhere for herself and Oliver to live. This wasn’t going to be any temporary departure, and it was important to find the right place. She had no intention of rushing it. The wretched situation between herself and Leo would just have to be endured until she could find something. She knew that the Capstall hearing was coming up in two weeks’ time, and with any luck that would keep him so busy that they wouldn’t have to see much of one another. Rachel didn’t think she could bear it otherwise.
When the phone rang, and the receptionist spoke Charles Beecham’s name, Rachel realised with a little stab of guilt that he had been entirely out of her thoughts for the past forty-eight hours. Leo was enough to contend with. She sighed as she asked for him to be put through.
‘Hello, Charles.’
‘Hi. I wanted to make sure you were back safe and sound.’
‘Oh, I’m safe all right,’ murmured Rachel, ‘but I’m not so sure about sound. In fact, I think I’m falling apart.’
‘That’s just jet lag. Look, I thought we could have lunch – I’m up in town today. I’d really like to see you.’
Rachel realised, listening to his voice, that she would like very much to see him, too, to talk with some sane, cheerful representative of the opposite sex who was not Leo. ‘I can’t,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I’ve got too much to catch up on, and I have a meeting with the senior partner at two.’
‘What about dinner? I’m going to be holed up in the country for the next two weeks, working on this series, so this is my only day.’
‘Sorry. We’ve had something of a domestic crisis, and I haven’t got a nanny at the moment, so there’s no one to look after Oliver.’
‘Bring him along! I haven’t seen the little guy since Christmas, anyway. It’s time he and I had a man-to-man chat.’
Rachel laughed. She had no real wish to spend any time in the same house as Leo at the moment, and any escape would be a relief. She didn’t start interviewing prospective nannies till tomorrow evening, so why not? She hesitated momentarily, then said, ‘All right. I can’t make any guarantees about Oliver’s behaviour, though.’
‘Can’t make any guarantees about mine,’ replied Charles cheerfully, then gave her the name of a restaurant. ‘Eight all right?’
‘Make it eight-thirty,’ said Rachel. ‘That gives me time to get back and pick him up.’
‘Right. See you then.’
In the restaurant that evening Oliver sat in a high chair, looking round with bright, attentive eyes at everything and everyone, banging a steady accompaniment on his high-chair table with a spoon.
Charles’s enthusiasm for the company of Oliver was genuine, but moderate. He would have preferred to have Rachel to himself, but if this was the only way that he could see her, so be it. He breathed a deep, inward sigh of pleasure at the sight of her, the poised, vulnerable loveliness that he found so challenging. She was not overtly sensual, but Charles felt that in the depths of those dark blue eyes lay a certain sexual promise, one which, with luck, he would take great delight in exploring and developing.
‘So what happened with the nanny?’ asked Charles, after they had ordered. He snapped a breadstick and handed half to Oliver.
Rachel did not look at him for a moment, deliberating whether or not to tell him. It would have been easy to say something oblique and casual, and deflect the subject, but somehow the urge to tell someone was overwhelming. She wanted professions of outraged sympathy, someone on her side.
‘I came home,’ she replied, looking up at Charles with a wry, small smile, ‘to find her in bed with my husband.’
Charles paused in the act of eating the other half of the breadstick, and exclaimed with gratifying horror, ‘No! My God …’
‘Well, not exactly in bed with him – he was down in the kitchen, pouring them both a little post-coital glass of wine. But she was upstairs in our bed, so it was all quite obvious.’
‘Hell’s bells,’ murmured Charles. He took a long draught of his wine, thinking that here was a starter for ten. This chap just couldn’t keep it still, could he? First he knocked off other blokes, then the nanny … Mind you, leaving a fellow alone for two weeks with a nubile young nanny, you could see how it happened. Perfectly understandable, but not excusable. ‘So – what happened?’ he asked, his instinct for good, confiding gossip and domestic drama nicely aroused.
‘I sent her packing – well, she went the next day, and I – well, I don’t know if I really said enough to Leo …’ Her voice trailed away, and she stared thoughtfully at the food which a waitress had just placed before her. It was the first time, oddly, that she had ever referred to Leo by name but, although the name registered with Charles, he made no connection between the fiend in human form and anyone of his own acquaintance. Then Rachel went on, ‘You see, if it had really shocked me, if it had been the first time he had wounded me, or damaged our relationship, I suppose I would have been more – more incensed. Do you know what made me really angry? It was the fact that, because of him, I had to get rid of a perfectly good nanny, someone whom I thought I liked and trusted, and whom Oliver liked.’
‘Well,’ observed Charles, scooping up strands of linguini, ‘clearly she wasn’t someone to like or trust.’
Rachel sighed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Not as far as my husband was concerned. But it didn’t stop her being good at her job. Now I have to go through the rigmarole of finding another, and that’s something I could have done without, quite frankly. And that’s another thing.’ Rachel’s eyes were bright with anger and she had flushed lightly, making her, Charles thought, look prettier than ever. He wondered if another bottle of this rather good house red might oil the wheels a bit, and glanced round for the waiter. ‘I don’t see why it should automatically be me who has to recruit a new nanny. I wasn’t responsible for her leaving! Just because I’m Oliver’s mother.’
Charles murmured to the waiter and then turned his attention back to Rachel. ‘Why didn’t you tell him to go and find a new one, then?’
Rachel paused in the middle of cutting up bits of spaghetti for Oliver and gave Charles a look of exasperation. ‘Because nothing would happen. Because it all goes over his head. It’s something to do with upbringing. He’s one of those men who is used to seeing the women around hi
m running households, busying themselves so that he and all the other men he knows can sail serenely on with their lives. We – I need a new nanny, so I’m the one who gets it done.’
Charles refilled her glass surreptitiously, and she drank some more to cool her annoyance. ‘So,’ said Charles, ‘what now?’ He held his breath. She couldn’t be so daft as to sit there in the same house as this chap, waiting for him to have a go at the next nanny, or find a new boyfriend, could she? She must have had it up to here by now. Unless, of course, she loved him so much that she would put up with anything. There were women like that.
‘I’m leaving him,’ replied Rachel, meeting Charles’s gaze.
He nodded thoughtfully, betraying nothing of the ecstatic delight which filled him. ‘Where will you go?’ He gave a little frown, having to work to control the muscles of his mouth from spreading into a happy grin.
‘I haven’t worked that out yet. I’m certainly not going to just start packing bags and flying out of the house. I’ll have to see a lawyer about a divorce, I suppose, and think about money …’
A divorce, thought Charles. This was the real thing. Open season. ‘But you can’t go on living with him, can you? I mean—’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘You should be out of there like a shot.’
‘Where would I go?’ asked Rachel. ‘I’ve got to find somewhere decent, permanent, with enough room for a nanny. And I’ve got work to think about. This is quite an important time for me. I have to plan things carefully, so it’ll just have to take as long as it takes. Not,’ she added, ‘that I wouldn’t leave now, if I could.’
‘Come and stay with me,’ said Charles simply.