Straight on Till Morning

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  Chapter 22

  Ruth had stayed another hour and been all the things you could wish for in a friend. Consoling. Sensible. Calm. Non-judgemental. Non-judgemental, above all. I was so weary of judging myself. So tired of finding myself wanting. I had, as I’d known I would, finally caved in and cried. Noisily, snottily, self-pityingly, endlessly, and she had sat and comforted me till I had run out of tears and then made us both a cup of coffee.

  And then she had gone home and I had taken Merlin for a walk in the dark and, feeling better for being out and under the same black spangly sky as he was, I had sent Nick a message of star stuff and kisses, and without waiting for a response, or even considering phoning him for fear of what I might say, I took myself off up to bed.

  I had slept for a scant two hours when I woke with my head full of horrible conviction. Ruth was right, I decided. Fidelity in perpetuity might sound like something worthy and trite that belonged on a crest or a mission statement, but it was also the thing I had promised, in a church, all those years back. That was the deal. That was what marriage was about. I was in love with Nick Brown and I didn’t love Jonathan. But what of it? That was the deal.

  It was one thirty, and raining again. Sheeting down in metallic rods. I went downstairs to the kitchen. The Christian Aid envelope was still sitting on the kitchen table where I’d left it, and I picked it up now, feeling wretched again. It was such a little thing, having forgotten about the marquee man coming, and yet it felt like the talisman for all the sins I was committing. Against my husband, my marriage vows, my responsibility to my children, my responsibility for my family – so many people’s happiness and well being, all of which I was subjugating for my own selfish needs.

  Ruth had talked more. Not about selfishness. On the contrary – she had talked about responsibility for self, and the right to individual happiness, self determination, personal fulfilment, and lots of other right-on feel-good stuff that turn of the century fidelity-challenged society soothed itself with when their guilt got too much. And though I was all too aware of her relative inexperience in matters of marriage and children, I too had found her words seductive and soothing. I’d joined a new club now. The failed. The unfaithful.

  But that was then, and in my vulnerable, small hours state I could now see it for what it was. Excuses. Justifications. A large-scale attempt to absolve the guilty now the guilty numbered enough that they could get together and whine about their lot. There were the wronged and the wrongdoers, and I had become one of the latter. I had no excuses. If my happiness would make so many others unhappy then how could I expect any rights?

  Purposely ignoring my mobile, I pulled my diary from my bag and added Mr Poselthwaite to it. Then flicked over to the pages for notes at the back. The dress fittings, the cake, the invitations, the limo. My mother’s Downing Street photos. My interview – was Friday really only two days away now? –The costumes I’d still to finish for Kate’s show next week. So much to do. So many things to get organised. All of them a part of the fabric of my life and yet none of them seemed anything to do with me any more. I felt like an impostor in my own family.

  I reached for my bag again, and this time I did pick up my phone. Nick’s answering message was long and loving, and had been sent only half an hour ago. He was out on his balcony, he said, and it was raining again. And he was worried about whether I was coping OK, because he wasn’t sure he was, and he wanted to talk.

  His words made me start crying all over again. But we still had one whole night before Jonathan returned. And resolved though I was that it should be both our first and last together, I wasn’t about to give it up.

  ‘You have a fabulous view of the stars from here.’

  Funny that Ruth’s words of gung-ho abandon should have had such a contradictory effect on me. I felt like someone addicted to a forty a day habit who had made a pact with themselves to kick it, and soon, but who was equally determined to eke out their last cigarette.

  He was standing close behind me, arms loosely around my waist, the hairs on his chest tickling my back. I had discharged my marquee responsibility, and spent a fruitful hour in the garden with the very chatty Mr Poselthwaite, while he’d measured and tutted and measured again. Then I’d phoned Morgan and left a message on her answerphone to let her know everything had been arranged OK and that he’d be back round the following week with his quote.

  I had then walked and fed Merlin and showered and re-dressed and then driven myself, tingling and uncertain, round to Nick’s.

  He was cooking when I’d arrived, gloriously badly. It was such a novelty, being around a male person who had the run of his own pepper mill and fish slice. More delightful still that he was so utterly inept. He was no chef. Which pleased me absurdly, and had me clucking and reaching for utensils, until his indignant refusal to let me help him made me realise, with a start, that this was what I did. I took people and cared for them. Made up for their deficiencies. But not this person. He was having none of it.

  ‘You,’ he’d said sternly, ‘will sit on that stool. And you will eat a breadstick and watch me and look sexy and sip that (I held a glass of white wine in my hand) and make approving noises where appropriate. I will not learn if I don’t make mistakes. Here was someone who didn’t require mothering. Would I, I wondered fleetingly, be similarly pugnacious if I was attempting to put up a shelf and he offered to deal with the drill? I rather thought I might be. Funny, this constant re-analysis suddenly of the ground rules we’d based our marriages on. I felt like a new person. That I’d sloughed off a carapace and emerged shiny and new underneath. I wondered about his wife. Imagined her holding court in her kitchen and dismissing his ineffectual offers of help. I wondered how early such demarcations took hold. But I didn’t wonder for long. There was something so compelling and endearing about his endeavours that once he’d finished doing battle with his bolognaise sauce, I had been so overcome with emotion and desire that I had insisted he put everything in the oven to keep warm while we went and made love in his bed..

  And now we had eaten his spaghetti and lumpy sauce and defrosted profiteroles that were still icy in the middle and fed the last of the breadsticks to each other. We were still clad in two of his towels. I had fixed mine around my waist as he had, because it thrilled me so much to be a sex object and not a domestic appliance for a change. And because he would touch my breasts from time to time with the same gentle, loving, uncomplicated tenderness with which I would caress Merlin’s ears. We had taken our mugs of coffee out on to the balcony. A different coffee this time. One flavoured with hazelnut. He nuzzled his face against my neck.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘Pretty neat, isn’t it?’

  We continued to gaze out at the twinkling panorama. The night was perfectly still. Rainless and tar black. I wished I had more and better words to describe it, but nothing seemed up to the job. Beautiful. Breathtaking. No words were worthy.

  ‘I wonder if we’ll ever really know what’s out there,’ he said. ‘In our lifetime, I mean. I wonder if we’ll ever make it beyond our solar system.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. Do you? And you know? I’m glad, in a way. I like the fact that we know so little about the universe. Wouldn’t it be disappointing if we rattled off to another constellation and found it was just the same as here? Petrol stations, supermarkets – ‘

  ‘Branches of McDonalds.’

  ‘Exactly. Besides, we do know what’s out there.’

  ‘We do?’

  I turned around to face him. ‘Of course we do. Neverland, silly.’ Where I felt we were now, in fact. For the moment, at least. He smiled. ‘That sure takes me back.’

  ‘Second star to the left and straight on till morning.’ I wished us there, badly. ‘Hang on. Or was it right?’

  He grinned. ‘Oh, for sure.’

  ‘Yep, you’re right. It was right. Except the only thing is I don’t want it to be morning. I don’t ever want it to be morning, Nick.’
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  He turned me around again and dipped his chin into my neck, cupping a breast in each hand. ‘OK, then,’ he said, pointing at the night sky. ‘So how about we go off and explore somewhere else instead ? How about second star on the right, then take a left at Mars, then go round the mini roundabout just after Mercury, then straight down the dual carriageway until we hit Venus.’

  ‘Why Venus?’

  He laughed. ‘Because she’s the goddess of love, of course, dingbat.’

  ‘That sounds much better.’

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it? Here –’

  He took my mug from me and placed it with his on the table. Then swept me up suddenly. Just like that. Legs and all.

  ‘It’s one hell of a journey,’ he said, carrying me inside. ‘So we’d best crack on, don’t you think?’

  *

  When I woke, at five, I didn’t know where I was. The light from a streetlamp formed window pane squares across the far wall. He was lying close beside me, one leg curved over mine, his features suspended in sleep.

  I shook him gently awake. Watched his eyes blink open.

  ‘I can’t see you any more,’ I told him.

  His eyes stayed open. Unblinking now.

  ‘I’m dreaming, right?’

  I moved my head against the pillow slightly.

  ‘No.’

  His lips formed an ‘O’. ‘It’s a nightmare then, is it?’

  I moved my head again.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it. I can’t do this, Nick.’

  He lifted his arm and tucked one hand behind his head. His hair had sprung up into lots of tiny curls as he’d slept. I had this at least. This beautiful memory. He frowned at me. ‘There’s nothing I can say, is there?’

  It wasn’t really a question.

  Which was fine, because I couldn’t answer him now anyhow. His face swam in front of me, distorted by my tears. He pulled me close to him.

  ‘I love you, Sally. You know that?’

  ‘That isn’t much help.’

  ‘I should have told you already.’

  ‘I should have told you.’

  ‘That you love me?’

  ‘I love you.’

  He hugged me, tight as could be. Tight till it hurt. ‘But you’re leaving me anyway.’ His voice sounded strange.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Sally, you don’t.’

  Straight on till morning. ‘Yes I do.’

  Chapter 23

  It’s so easy to make judgements about people. To criticise, blame and condemn the unfaithful. Easier still to have a set of rules and morality in place and to cite them, with a tut, at those who fail to meet them. I recalled the day David, the man who used to be practice manager at Sandals when I was a new trainee, announced to us in the staff room that he was transferring to another practice because he was leaving his wife for someone else. I remembered how much I had liked David. I remembered how much he’d helped and supported me when I was new. I remembered what a nice man he was. Yet I also remembered how he had left the staff room and how the mutterings of disapproval had ricocheted around the space, burgeoning and intensifying with every utterance. How irresponsible he was. How wrong it all was. How not-on it all was. How could he? We’d all chorused. How could he be so selfish and cruel? How very slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails-ish a thing it was that he had done. I remember I had joined in. I knew nothing of his wife, his marriage, his situation, yet I judged him along with everyone else. I mainly remember how we’d all been so polite and impeccably behaved in his presence, yet how readily we’d turned the knife on him as soon as his back was there to be stabbed. To my shame, I don’t think I ever really stopped to wonder about him. Whether he was all right. Whether we had any right to pass judgement on his actions with such breathtaking surety. Whether he was carrying quite enough guilt around with him already. Because to most of us who are not in unhappy marriages, the precipitate actions of those around us who are, are just another rather distasteful example of the selfish pursuit of their own ends. So much judgement, based on so little knowledge. I wondered how he was now.

  Fidelity was all about sex, of course. It didn’t matter what went on in your head as long as you remained sexually faithful. Which struck me as a bit of a farce. Having secret sex with other people for recreation – playing around – might be called infidelity, but on its own it was something far less serious. True infidelity, it seemed to me, was not about having sex with someone else. It was actually about having love for someone else.

  Which was not the best job-lot of cheery thoughts with which to be greeting your husband and daughter from Gatwick airport at tea-time on a Thursday afternoon, but as that was the one that was lodged in my fore-brain, that was, of necessity, what I was thinking. But, blinking now at the ‘baggage in hall’ sign above me, I knew I must step smartly off the rollercoaster now and fix myself firmly back on the flat, grey tarmac of my life.

  I wondered if they’d notice my swollen eyes.

  Kate was already on her mobile as they came through the arrivals door towards me. Talking to Carl, no doubt, to arrange their next date. I envied her her freedom from care. She looked tall, beautiful, bronzed, serene. Jonathan was lugging both cases, as ever, and a small flame of compassion lit somewhere inside me for this man, this greying and rather dignified man who knew nothing of what was going on in my heart. I smiled and waved my arm about enthusiastically, as if the action might slap me back into some semblance of order. But it was if I was doing it underwater, through a mask.

  Kate, as I had dreaded but expected, went out only half an hour after we arrived back home. No longer than it took her to press her bag of dirty washing upon me with exhortations to pleeeease wash her black jeans and jacket before the end of exams party the following night. And then it was just us. Him and me, him and her. Because as far as Jonathan was concerned it was his reliable and faithful wife who was sitting opposite him at the kitchen table, eating the chicken and salad I’d hastily prepared and sharing a decent bottle of wine. And why would he not? It was an ordinary Thursday. Apart from a suitcase in the hallway and some duty free gin – Bob and Androulla were due to arrive Saturday and they drank it by the bucket – in all other respects it was a straightforward evening. Duty had taken up where my heart had left off.

  But there was one thing about ordinary married life that was beginning to loom large over our evening. I could feel it, even as Jonathan passed me the pepper, commented wryly on the state of the government’s policies on Railtrack, laughed a little too heartily when I made some small joke. And even as his absence of irritability and his lack of curt rejoinders was looking like a bit of welcome relief from the gruntiness of his company on a normal Thursday evening, I was already feeling beneath for its real root. I knew very well why he was being nice to me. It was because he wanted to have sex.

  We finished our supper, watched a dreary programme about the storming of some twelfth century castle or other, and then the tail end of a made for TV movie that had lots of post-watershed shots of people having sex in unlikely locations. It was about then that chill fingers of panic begin to press against the hard knot of pain inside me. But before I could grab the remote and expunge it, Jonathan announced that he’d had enough television and that he thought it was about time to toddle off to bed.

  ‘You coming?’ he asked me. For this was the shorthand.

  Rusty, I found myself thinking. Wasn’t that what secretaries put on job applications? Fifty words per minute typing and rusty shorthand. Life, work, stress, tennis, aches, pains, cricketing injuries, gruelling extractions, the M23, flood, fire, there being an R in the month, me being out, him being away; Whatever the reason the net result didn’t vary. There wasn’t a lot of sex in our marriage. Sex was a B-list recreational activity that filled in a gap in his schedule. Something to do once a fortnight or so, when there wasn’t a more pressing fix
ture on the cards. The trouble was, it had ever been thus. I had met and fallen in love with a man who was still grieving for the young wife he’d so tragically lost and stumbling miserably through the minefield of single parenting. Was it any wonder his sexual appetite was slight? And what about me? The naïve, rather timid, somewhat self-conscious me? I’d been, of course, what any adoring young wife would be. Patient, understanding, and largely undemanding. And then we’d had Kate and we were both little interested. It was all so painfully obvious now it made me wretched to consider it. Such folly. I’d been too young, too inexperienced, too stupid to realise that it didn’t have to – wasn’t supposed to – be this way.

  But sex was a part of a marriage, like any other, and we had not had sex now for three or four weeks. Sex was due. And that was all there was to it. He was hovering by the door jamb, one hand in his pocket.

  I nodded and turned to finish clearing the kitchen. Yes, I was coming, I said. I wouldn’t be long. I toyed, for some minutes, with the idea of lingering. Just long enough that he’d give up and go to sleep. But something told me that tonight this plan would be fruitless.

  I could do this, I told myself. I have to do this. I have to.

  So slowly, compliantly, on my two guiltily feet, I took myself off up the stairs. Up to bed.

  He’d turned off the lights and drawn both sets of curtains. And even before I had climbed in beside him, engaged in this loveless love we’d be making, I knew, as surely as I knew anything, that I’d never want to do this with Jonathan again.