The Director's Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

  The silence lengthened as disbelief, fright and anger all warred within her, then anger got the upper hand. ‘Well, I’ll tell you why the state of our marriage isn’t all joy to me at the moment, Tom West, ’ Cathy said through her teeth, and was dimly amazed at herself. ‘You cut me out of most of your life! Because I love it here, you’re content to leave me here, and you fob me off with silly excuses about it all being business, but you won’t even discuss it with me. I don’t even know if it is all business! You certainly have a lot of friends that I only get to meet when they come here, but they… I mean, when they do, they talk about this party or this “happening” or that, and you certainly don’t look blank, although I-’

  ‘In this business, Cathy,’ he broke in roughly, ‘people give parties and “happenings” on the flimsiest of pretexts, and that’s how most of the business is conducted. It’s all a part of the industry and it’s incredibly fake often—and something I thought you’d be happier to live without, to be honest.’

  ‘You don’t——’

  ‘It’s also part of my livelihood—and,’ his eyes glinted with sudden menace, ‘are you accusing me of being unfaithful to you when you say you don’t even know if it is all business?’

  The only sound to pierce this silence was the irregular thud of a football approaching. All the colour had drained from Cathy’s face now as she stared at Tom and her lips parted several times.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said painfully at last. ‘You’re away so much. It’s as if you have two lives. I don’t know…’

  ‘So—all women are the same. I thought you were different, Cathy. I thought——’

  ‘I know what you thought,’ she whispered as something inside her felt raw and bleeding. ‘You thought that if you married me you could have the best of both words—a Cinderella who was grateful enough and young enough and in love enough to take care of this part of your life——’ she gestured ‘—without disturbing the rest of it. So you could go on being your own man who basically despises women on an intellectual level.’

  ‘Is that what you really think?’ Tom was paler now too, but his eyes were glittering dangerously and a nerve flickered in his jaw.

  ‘I don’t know what else to think,’ she said despairingly. ‘Why——’ she licked her lips ‘—why don’t you want us to have a baby? Do you think it will tie you to me more than you want to be tied?’

  ‘I’m irrevocably tied to you, Cathy,’ he said harshly. ‘Is it so inconceivable for you to stop and think that, since once you have children you have them for the rest of your life, therefore this part of our life will be gone for ever?’

  A tremor went through Cathy and her shoulders slumped. ‘Is it inconceivable for you to admit, Tom,’ she said huskily, ‘that you can’t keep me a perpetual Cinderella?’

  They stared at each other until she said tone-lessly, ‘Our surrogate son is here.’

  He swore and raked her from head to toe with a hard hazel glance, and she trembled visibly, but he said no more—the way he slammed the door as he left said it for him.

  He didn’t come in again until about eight o’clock, and Cathy guessed he’d walked to the village pub after his exertions with William, which they sometimes did together—never alone. Cathy tried to eat her own dinner, but it was oddly hard to swallow, and she left a light meal of cold meat and salad out for him and wandered out into the garden. It was that lovely last-of-the-daylight time, and the garden Tom’s grandmother had planted and his mother had tended was alive with perfume and the slight dampness of approaching night.

  When she went in at last, he was eating his meal at the kitchen table.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were back,’ she said nervously, and stood just inside the kitchen doorway rubbing her hands down the side of her dress.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Just… in the garden. It’s been a beautiful day. I wonder how many more we’ll get?’

  ‘The longer you live in Victoria, the more you realise it’s useless to speculate. Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said briefly, and went on eating.

  Cathy made the tea in a nerve-racking silence. But when she put a cup and saucer down in front of him, he said, ‘Sit down, Cathy. I’m off tomorrow morning about my “dubious” business, so we have to have this out now. Has a burning desire to do Chloe really awakened in you?’

  She stirred her tea, then lifted her blue eyes to his, and they were shadowed but suddenly obstinate. ‘Yes. But you don’t think I’m capable of it, do you?’

  ‘That’s a new twist,’ he said drily. ‘I think——’ he sat back and surveyed her expressionlessly ‘—you could certainly look the part, you’re eyecatching enough for that, but good-looking girls are a dime a dozen. Whether you can reproduce what Pete has in mind in front of a camera remains to be seen. But the other problem will be working with me—not an easy task under the best of circumstances, harder when everyone will be attuned to our slightest vibrations towards each other, and ever harder——’ he paused ‘—if you cherish the doubts about me that you’ve obviously been nurturing for some time.’

  Cathy stared at him. ‘You’re not going to forgive me for that, are you, Tom?’ she said at last.

  He lifted his shoulders in what could have been a denial or simply a gesture of indifference.

  Cathy swallowed and battled with some angry, frustrated tears.

  He watched her, then he said, ‘Cathy, what we had was rather unique. It was for me, anyway, and to be honest again, the other side of my life, my art, if that’s not too grandiose a term for it, is something I can’t share with anyone—it’s the way I’m made. But what we did share, the lovely, quiet times——’

  ‘What do you mean?’ A spark of panic lit her eyes. ‘You’re talking as if it’s all over!’

  Tom grimaced, ‘It’s about to enter a new era.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be different,’ she said hoarsely. ‘We can still have the quiet times—what have I done?’ she asked more of herself than him. And she jumped up and knocked her chair over in her agitation.

  ‘Cathy——’

  But she ignored him and the fallen chair and ran to their bedroom.

  She was standing in the middle of it, looking around wildly, when he came in and closed the door. ‘Go away!’ she whispered fiercely. ‘You won’t even try to understand. You’re treating me as if we lived in the Middle Ages, as if I were a possession and had to be content just to be a wife—or more particularly, someone to sleep with…’

  ‘I sometimes wonder if that wasn’t the way it was meant to be,’ Tom said ironically. ‘But at least you could console yourself with the fact that you enjoy sleeping with me, however badly I treat you in other respects.’ His eyes mocked her. ‘It also seems to me it might be what you need right now.’

  ‘I don’t——’

  ‘Oh, come on, Cathy, this is getting out of hand,’ he said impatiently, and reached for her. ‘Is it something to do with the time of the month?’

  ‘No. Tom——’

  But he picked her up and carried her over to the bed, where she only exhausted herself trying to fight him and ended up lying with her hair spread out, her dress rucked up to her thighs, her eyes bitter and her mouth clamped shut, her wrists caught in his hand.

  ‘This is not only getting out of hand, it’s ridiculous,’ he said grimly, and released her wrists abruptly. ‘You’re carrying on as if I’m about to rape you!’

  Cathy caught her breath and said huskily, ‘But you seem to think making love to me is the sole solution, the cure for all my problems, yet you won’t even let it be productive—you know, I don’t think you understand women very well at all, Tom.’

  He sat back and stared down at her in a way that was angry, then became curiously cold and calculating, and at last he said coldly. ‘All right. Teach me, then, Cathy. Make your statement and let’s put it to the test—you’ve go
t the part.’ He shrugged and with a cynical little glint in his eyes, let his gaze rove the twisted grace of the way she was lying.

  Cathy sat up and pulled her dress down defensively. She said slowly as she rubbed her wrists, ‘I don’t want the part without a screen test. I don’t want any patronage or the possibility of people saying I only got it because of you. I want Duncan’s approval as well.’

  Tom was silent and their gazes caught and clashed.

  ‘What happens if the screen test is no good?’ he queried at last.

  ‘I’ll… find something else to do.’

  ‘You’re sure you wouldn’t care to leave me altogether?’

  ‘That depends on you,’ she said barely audibly, but her eyes were bravely stubborn again, although her mouth trembled.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘That is laying down the gauntlet, Cat,’ he added softly, but his eyes were entirely enigmatic. ‘Well, let’s begin our new life.’ He stood up and walked towards the door.

  ‘Tom…’

  He turned and lifted an eyebrow at her.

  ‘Don’t leave me like this.’

  He studied her for a long time. The long fair ruffled fall of curls, her pale but composed face, the blue and white dress and the blue canvas shoes she wore with rope wedge heels and narrow crisscross ties about her slender ankles. Then he said, quite gently, ‘Cathy, you object to me making love to you unproductively—as you put it—you’ve rejected my offer to change that and you’ve chosen the other option. Let’s just leave it at that for the time being.’ He walked out and closed the door quietly.

  Cathy stared at the door for a full minute. Then she buried her face in the pillow and wept.

  The next morning Tom was gone when she got up and there was a brief note for her on the hall table saying that he’d be back the following afternoon. It was a strategically placed note—it was propped on a copy of the screenplay of Peter Partridge’s best-seller.

  ‘Well?’ Tom looked at Duncan and Peter in turn in the small darkened auditorium, but not at Cathy.

  ‘I told you…’ Pete started to say, but it was Duncan Tom was really concentrating on.

  And it was Duncan who turned to Cathy and said, ‘My dear, he was right. You have a haunting quality on screen I’ve rarely seen equalled. And the contrast between your Chloe and Bronwen’s much more robust and earthy Portia will be quite stunning.’ He paused and turned to Tom. ‘But what do you think, Tom?’ he asked with his eyes slightly narrowed.

  ‘I agree.’ It was said abruptly. ‘So, the show is on the road—are we all agreed we’re ready to start shooting on schedule? You have no further alterations for the screenplay, Pete? Or last-minute changes of casting in mind, or any other changes you can think of?’

  Pete looked hurt. ‘I only want to get it right!’

  ‘Of course!’ Tom said blandly. ‘Would I suggest anything else? Then it’s Queensland, here we come! ’

  ‘Queensland?’ Cathy stared at him.

  ‘Oh, did I forget to tell you?’ her husband said casually. ‘We’ve hired the Warner Village Road Show studios at Cades County, which, for your further information, is between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, closer to the Coast. The new Mission Impossible series was filmed there… We’ll be using the Upper Coomera Valley which is just behind Cades County for the outdoor sequences and Brisbane and Surfers for the city shots, and the Broadwater and Stradbroke Island for the idyllic uninhabited tropical island sequences so dear to Pete’s heart. If it worked for Paramount to turn south-east Queensland into any part of the world they wanted, I don’t see why it can’t work for us— you look a little stunned, Cathy.’

  ‘Where will we live?’ she asked.

  ‘At a place nearby called Sanctuary Cove. We leave next week. Any more questions?’ he asked all round.

  There weren’t. Cathy, for the simple reason that it was impossible for her to communicate with Tom on any but the most superficial level and had been since that disastrous night when she’d made her objections to the state of their marriage plain, and in her hurt and confusion had withdrawn into herself. She had also asked herself a number of times how it was that she could love a man and have lived with him for two years yet still understand so little about him. But Duncan also looked as if he had something on his mind, although he chose not to reveal it, and if it hadn’t been for Pete’s bubbling enthusiasm which once again made him immune to any undercurrents, the lunch Duncan gave them might have been an awkward affair.

  The drive back to Mount Macedon from Melbourne was accomplished almost in silence, although one part of Cathy was crying out to break it, to wring some words of reassurance from Tom even if he wasn’t prepared to comment on the screen test—even just some general discussion about the film, anything, but every time she stole a glance at his shuttered expression her courage failed her.

  And by the time they reached home, a sense of resentment had replaced the need for reassurance and had stilled the growing feeling that there must be some way to understand him, perhaps some key from his past to unlock this barred path to his heart. It had occurred to her that she knew very little about his past other than the facts of it.

  It was a long drive, and she was stiff and cramped when they pulled up in front of the house.

  ‘Have a bath,’ said Tom as he unlocked the front door. ‘I’ll fix up some dinner.’

  ‘I’m not terribly hungry.’

  ‘You have to eat, Cathy,’ he said much as he might have spoken to William, and for an instant a flare of anger lit her blue eyes, but she turned away and stilled the impulse to say something cutting in return.

  But while a warm scented bath washed away the stiffness of her body, it didn’t ease her resentment or that curious, cold little feeling of panic around her heart.

  True to its reputation, the Victorian weather had done a complete about-face, and it was a cold, windy night, so she put on a pair of red and white dotted silk pyjamas and her rich red velvet robe.

  And Tom had built a fire in the lounge grate and set his dinner out in front of it—a light meal of tinned asparagus soup and toasted chicken sandwiches.

  He also made some effort at conversation as they ate in front of the fire. ‘Have you ever been to Queensland?’

  ‘No. It should be… interesting.’

  He looked wry. ‘You’ve obviously heard it described as the Deep North.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Your expression of guarded reserve,’ he murmured.

  ‘Well,’ Cathy shrugged ‘people do talk about Bananaland and Banana Benders, so…’

  ‘It’s a different lifestyle. The tropics and subtropics have that effect on people.’

  ‘So they’re more relaxed up there?’ she asked with a lifted eyebrow.

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Don’t you approve?’

  Tom grimaced. ‘Yes, I do. In small doses.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You’re doing it again, Cathy,’ he said softly. She raised her blue gaze to his. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Looking all guarded and reserved.’

  She stared at him. Then she said coolly, ‘I was wondering if it’s a good idea for you to be making a film up there, that’s all.’

  ‘In case the relaxed atmosphere drives me round the bend? I wondered the same thing, so at least I’m aware of the problem.’ He put his plate down and sat back in the linen-covered armchair. ‘Don’t you agree that’s half the battle?’

  Cathy got rid of her own plate and stood up to pour the coffee. The fire glowed brightly on her hair as she bent down—the rest of the comfortable, chintzy room, with its lovely porcelain lamps and vases and oak tables and bookcases, was in the shadows.

  ‘Cathy?’

  She straightened with his cup and saucer in her hands. ‘I don’t know. I guess time will tell.’

  ‘And what,’ he held her blue gaze with his own, ‘do you think time will tell about us?’

  ‘I’ve told you—but ever sinc
e I told you, you’ve treated me like a stranger, you sleep in the spare room,’ her eyes flashed suddenly, ‘which I happen to think is adolescent,’ she finished bitterly.

  ‘So you’re missing it, Cat?’ he said softly.

  She put the cup down, but on the tray. ‘I’m missing being treated like an equal, like an intelligent human being. I’m wondering why you’re like this, and why it took me so long to realise I don’t understand you at all.’

  ‘You might not like it if I told you why I’m like this, Cathy,’ he said after a long tense pause. ‘You might like it even less, but since you’ve insisted on being treated like an equal and an intelligent human being, and since you’ve insisted on doing Chloe, you’re probably going to find out anyway. Sit down.’

  Her eyes widened and her lips parted at something in his voice, something that lay under the even syllables and chilled her oddly.

  ‘You asked me once why I married you. There were several reasons—the one that I made plain to you and hasn’t changed; guilt also, which hasn’t changed either,’ he said drily. ‘And—the fact that you’re the exact opposite, or so I thought, to the only other woman I ever asked to marry me.’ Cathy could only stare for an age, then she said, and thought her voice didn’t sound like her own at all, ‘She didn’t want to?’

  ‘She knocked me back—let’s not beat about the bush.’ He smiled faintly but derisively.

  ‘Why? Didn’t she love you?’

  He shrugged. ‘What is love? Perhaps we had differing opinions of it. She was content to live with me as if she loved me but make no commitment.’

  Cathy frowned confusedly. ‘There must have been a reason.’

  ‘A reason,’ Tom said musingly, and stared into the fire. ‘Oh, yes, there was a reason. Her career— her all-consuming passion, you might say, that just couldn’t be fitted around a marriage.’

  ‘What career?’

  He lifted his eyes to hers and she was struck by the cynicism in his hazel glance. ‘Acting, my dear Cathy, as you feel yours should be. It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?’